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 blush 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. See also Late to the Punchline, which is where a character who doesn't get a joke finally gets it, making it a kind of Brick Joke for that character. The Flying Brick, however, refers to something else entirely. See Comeback Tomorrow if the character finally delivers their late comeback to a confused opponent.
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."
In the US, AT&T wireless aired a commercial boasting about how extensive their service is. The announcer starts flipping through postcards of places they cover onto an 8-foot-wide map of the US on the floor. The commercial ends. You think that's the end, but three or four commercials later it cuts back to the man. He's still flipping the postcards, and the map is nearly covered.
Hulu had an ad for a Toyota vehicle that was excited about the "limited commercial interruption". The woman in the commercial asks, "Have you ever seen a 5-second ad before?" When it gets to the first commercial break...
Woman from earlier: Mashed potatoes... Oh, you're back! Does this mean it's time for the 5-second a— *commercial ends*
Anime and Manga
Akira has a scene very early on where someone pulls the pin out of a grenade to blow himself up (as well as half the gymnasium.) However, when the grenade doesn't explode, he's pounced on. After Kaneda, his friends, and Kei leave, the grenade goes off in the gymnasium behind them.
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 the 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."
Happens in the Touhou manga Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth. Kaguya needs to lose weight, so Tewi fixes her a Banana YogurtNatto Drink. She doesn't drink it. Ten strips later, after she's tried several other means of losing weight, she comes back from a run with Mokou, thirsty, and Tewi hands her a drink...
Episode 6 of Durarara has Togusa try to track Kazatano with a sock for his scent. It seemed like the dog just ran off... but it turns out he did track them down at the end of the episode, just a bit too late.
In a chapter of Katteni Kaizo, Yoko Tanaka hid behind a brick wall, unnoticed. The series was then cancelled due to a lack of readership. In a completely unrelated chapter of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Senseiseven years later, she finally smashes through the wall and yells her name. Turns out that they share a common fanbase.
In Persona 4 The Animation, after Yosuke asks Yu if he'd seen Yukiko's Midnight Channel show, Yu responds that he wishes he'd taped it. Some episodes later, when Rise's is being broadcast, the camera cuts to Yu mashing the record button on his TV's remote.
During Death Note, it's made clear that Ryuk loves to eat apples. After a few offhand remarks about this, it is left out for a while. When Light voluntarily becomes incarcerated, Ryuk asks "So, I guess apples are out of the question now?"
In Gakuen Babysitters, after mistakenly believing Kotarou to have experienced his first love and needlessly preparing red beans and rice (see The Other Wiki on sekihan), Saikawa promises Ryuuichi that he would prepare sekihan as well for when Ryuuichi actually does experience his first love. A few chapters later, he does prepare the dish when Ryuuichi receives a love letter in his locker the very day he returns home, as if he were prepared to make the dish for that very moment.
The Duel Mastersdub was specially designed to lampshade the hell out of this trope during its television run. When the series was initially premiering on Toonami, there was one new episode a week. The closing line for one episode has a tournament announcer placing the game on hold for a commercial break, then the opening line for the next episode:
"That commercial break seemed to last a week."
The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer had one that spanned most of the series. In an early chapter, Sami catches Yuuhi out with a feint while sparring and comments on how bad he is at them. Cut to the second-last chapter where Yuuhi and Mikazuki are having one last big rematch as Beast Knights, and Mikazuki gets the final blow by calling a punch but throwing a kick, planting his foot straight in Yuuhi's face.
In the animated adaptation of Chuunibyou Demo Koi Ga Shitai, there was the twisted game of house that Touka and Yumeha were playing together where they are divorcees keeps popping up in random places.
It's first brought up in episode 5 after Yuuta comes back home after tutoring Rikka and sees them playing house in his room.
He finds them talking about it again when he comes back after he and Rikka confess to each other in episode 10.
The two of them talk about "being able to see the kids" in front of everyone in episode 11 before Touka leaves for her flight to Italy which surprises everyone but Yuuta.
Fist of the North Star sounds like the last series that would employ a brick joke, but it does. Kenshiro 'convinces' a sleazy bartender to do him a favor and watch over some orphaned kids by hitting a pressure point with a one-month time delay, promising to come back and 'turn off' the pressure point's effect. Several gory chapters later, Kenshiro goes back to check on the kids, and finds out that a village has offered to take care of the children. The orphans are thrilled to see Ken...and off in one corner of the page is the bartender, running out to meet Ken in a combination of joy and panic. The scene cuts away after that panel, so Ken probably restored the bartender after that page.
Very near the beginning of ROD The TV, Maggie mentions that she's a fan of Harry Potter. Two episodes later, while staying in Nenene's apartment, she decides to move into the cupboard under the stairs.
In Thunderbolts fifteenth issue Techno clones Baron Zemo so Techno can put his mind inside the clone. Presumably disturbed by Techno's lack of boundaries Zemo decides to kill the clone. Techno jokes maybe he should clone Kevin Costner instead. A couple years later Zemo is killed in his central american hideout and a few weeks later Techno finds a gelatinous footprint but he hides it from the other Thunderbolts. The last issue of the first volume of Thunderbolts resolves the mystery of the footprint. A resurrected and seemingly reformed Zemo (now in a new body) shows Hawkeye that he has given his castle to the natives who lived nearby. Hawkeye notices that one of the natives looks just like Kevin Costner.
Another one happened in the third issue of the current Marvel Now Thunderbolts series when after Deadpool finds out that General Ross/Red Hulk is using and holding captive an amnesiac and almost depowered The Leader for info and for future use behind the rest of the teams backs. Deadpool notes to Ross that if their teammate The Punisher finds out, he'll put a bullet right into Leader's forehead. Come the end of the issue, Deadpool is proven right, who happily responds with with "HA! Told you!"
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 one issue of Batman, The Joker is in Arkham Asylum, seen talking to his therapist in a bit involving a literal Brick Joke.
Chaos Bleeds, a game based on season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has Faith suggesting she uses stakes as dildos. For anyone remembering that small detail this comes back on her big time when Giles' aunts stay with her in the season nine comic series: one of them tells Faith she found earplugs where she keeps her sex toys.
In Bone, the reason why the Bone cousins were run out of Boneville is because Phoney campaign balloon ran amok, among other things. This is quickly forgotten as the Bones get caught up in the conflict of the Valley, with the mysterious Hooded One seeking Phoney because of an 'omen'. Halfway through the story it is revealed what this omen is; a giant balloon of Phoney with a torn banner that reads "Phonicible P. Bone Will Get You" Turns out the campaign balloon drifted across the desert into the valley. The banner used to read "Phonicble P. Bone Will Get Your Vote"
Zipi y Zape: The "Around the world" story has one. When the family wins a free trip around the world and they're told that any extra cost will also be covered. Once they finish the trip, they find that the company that gave them the trip is now in bankrupt after paying for all the destruction caused by the twins.
Tintin: Captain Haddock's difficulties with sticking plaster in The Calculus Affair are briefly referenced in Flight 714.
In Destination Moon, Thompson/Thomson believe there to be a skeleton sneaking around the moon project, due to a misunderstanding involving an x-ray machine. In Explorers on the Moon, when The Mole has been revealed and is being interrogated, they break in with a vital question: The skeleton, Wolff. Was that you?"
In The Red Sea Sharks, a shark swallows a stray landmine and hiccups in all sorts of directions, after it gets lost by a mook trying to sabotage the ship Tintin is on. Several strips later, a hiccup immediately followed by a loud underwater explosion can be seen on the horizon.
During the honey harvesting in My Little Pony Micro Series Issue 3, Rarity complains about Flax Seed using "like" every other word. The comic ends with Wheat Grass calling him out on it.
Flax Seed: Whoa! Anger.
In one Twisted Toyfare Theatre strip, a Smurf tells Spider-Man that "there is no Keyser Soze!" On the back of the trade collecting that strip, featuring an Unusual Suspects-style police line-up, Spidey wonders, "What the Hell's a 'Keyser Soze'?"
Fan Works
In Blind Naruto is watching Haku walk away and sees her hips swaying in an oh-so-seductive way which he tells Hinata about. It makes Hinata jealous and attempt to walk like that until Kurenai gives her a girl talk. A couple of chapters later Naruto is walking behind Hinata. Guess what he notices.
In Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality, Harry first goes to Gringotts, and learns about the wizarding monetary system, and quickly comes to the realization that one competent hedge fundie could probably own the entire wizarding world in a week, and files the notion away, in case he ever runs out of money, or has a week free. Several chapters later, Quirrell suggests to Dumbledore that Harry take Occlumency lessons, with the as-of-yet undetermined teacher to have his memory wiped after every training session and an unbreakable vow to not reveal anything.
Dumbledore: Such services are extremely expensive, as you well know, and I cannot help but wonder why you deem them necessary.
Harry: If it's money that's the problem, I have some ideas for making large amounts of money quickly -
In the prologue of Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Kyon compares being hit by Asakura Ryouko to being hit by a speeding minivan. Guess what happened over twenty-five chapters later.
In Chapter 15, Gilgamesh mentions that he wound up in the Haruhi Suzumiya universe after Ultros ripped him off, so he wandered the multiverse, vowing revenge. Sixty-seven chapters later, he finally gets the chance.
The blood on the wall re-appears in chapter 81 after showing up in the Silent Hill parody.
Early on, The Stinger at the end of each chapter was, "Review, Haruhi-worshippers! Your yellow ribbon-wearing goddess demands it!" One reviewer pointed out that this was incorrect, and that Haruhi wore a headband with yellow ribbons on it, so about 50 or so chapters after this was pointed out, the writer corrected it to "Review, Haruhi-worshippers! Your yellow-ribboned, headband-wearing goddess demands it!" This was lampshaded.
Pink Personal Hell And Altering Fate has a mild version, where it's explained Pinkie Pie is off chasing a "Prank Bit" that bounces away every time she tries to catch it. Then at the end of the scene, it bounces right back into the magic shop...followed by Pinkie herself.
The First Of Many: Princess Cadance tells Celestia how her date with Shining Armor went by making out with him in front of her, so after saying goodbye to her niece's date she sneaks him a condom. When Shining Armor returns to his own house and his parents ask how his date went, the condom falls out of his jacket, resulting in Shining's mother flipping out and grounding her son for the rest of the summer.
Earth And Sky: Pipsqueak initially completely misses the point of Big Macintosh's little heart-to-heart about his and Soarin's relationships with Big Mac's sisters, but does eventually figure it out... twenty-eight chapters later.
Films — Animation
The stop-motion animation film A Town Called Panic features a literal example 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.
Bernard, a museum curator, is zapped into a small cube with Megamind's dehydration gun and kept in his pocket, and Megamind spends much of the movie impersonating him. He doesn't reappear again until the credits, where he is accidentally rehydrated while Minion washes Megamind's laundry.
Remember how Mulan does her chores at the movie's beginning? At the end, we see that the chickens now associate Little Brother with food.
The decapitated ancestor also makes a humorous comeback in the ending.
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." 3 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.
The Lion King granted us another brick joke that took something like fifteen years to hit: after Hakuna Matata, when Timon, Pumbaa, and Simba are laying on the grass, looking up at the stars, Timon comments that they are "fireflies. Fireflies that got stuck up there in that big bluish black thing". Cue Princess And The Frog, when not only does Ray believe the Evening Star is another firefly called Evangeline, but he himself becomes a star, too, right beside her. It also goes off to show that Evangeline is the "second star on the right" you follow "till morning" to reach Neverland. Two brick jokes for the price of one.
In The Emperor's New Groove, in the beginning of the movie, Yzma announces to Kronk to "Pull the lever", and it sends her down a trap door into a moat with an alligator as she shouts, "WRONG LEVER!!". Then she angrily storms back in saying, "Why do we even HAVE that lever?" and smacking an alligator who was clinging to her. About 3/4ths of the way through the movie when Pacha and Kuzco walk back into the palace to enter Yzma's "Secret Lab", the first thing shown is a drenched Kuzco walking back in grumbling, "Why does she even HAVE that lever?" and smacking an alligator who was clinging to him.
In Brave, Merida tells the witch she'll buy all her carvings. Much, much later in the movie (after the credits) the crow comes up to the castle to deliver all of them.
In Piglet's Big Movie, during one of the flashbacks, Roo is drifting downriver and Eeyore tells Roo to grab his tail so he can pull him out. Roo tries, but misses. Later on at the end, Christopher Robins asks, "Where's Eeyore?" and it cuts back to him still hanging by the river asking Roo if he had grabbed on yet.
One scene of Coraline has Coraline visit Spink and Forcible, who give her a bowl of saltwater candy that is decades older than Coraline, so old the candies have melted together. Coraline tries to get a piece of candy out only to accidentally send it flying onto the ceiling, where it gets stuck. When Coraline is leaving their flat, the bowl of candy falls to the floor and shatters.
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.
Actually, this guy appeared in the police lineup earlier in the movie, soon after Paul gave the ridiculous description, but Paul said "It's not him."
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.
Bubba's momma serving dinner, then being served to.
At the beginning of the movie, Forrest tries to get to know the bus driver, Dorothy Harris, because his mother has told him not to take rides from strangers and , Forrest being as dense as he is, to him introducing themselves won't make them strangers anymore. At the end, Forrest Jr. immediately says upon being greeted onto the bus: "You're Dorothy Harris, and I'm Forrest Gump."
The ZAZ trio also had a few in The Naked Gun trilogy, specially the second: in a scene, Frank Drebin breaks out animals from the zoo after destroying the wall. After the villain is saved from a Disney Villain Death, a lion mauls him!
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 Spice World when a movie producer is pitching ideas about a movie involving the girls (interspersed 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 the movie 'Dutch' starring Ed O'Neill, the movie starts off with an antagonistic relationship between the title character and a stuck-up schoolboy. When they first meet at the beginning of the movie, the boy shoots Dutch with a BB Gun, and Dutch tosses off a line in frustration that he is going to shoot him in the ass with the same gun later. The movie takes place over a long and arduous journey, where the two warm up to each other. An otherwise heartwarming talk between the two midway through the movie has the boy asking whether Dutch is still going to shoot him in the ass, to which Dutch replies 'Yes.' Eventually they are best friends, but the last scene of the movie has Dutch sitting at the table holding the BB gun in the kids view, who obviously thinks Dutch is joking, but it is clear from Dutch's face that he isn't. After a cut to black for the credits, a 'thwippp! OWWWW!!!' is heard.
In Problem Child 2, Big Ben shacks up with Little Ben and Junior after confessing that his latest scam for "millionaire starter kits" has driven him to poor house, lamenting that he only sold one of the kits. Later, when Junior calls up the ex-husband of Little Ben's date, we see the poor guy living in absolute squalor and eating dog food out straight out of the can. Care to guess what's sitting on his counter?
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 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.
In Mario Bros, after finding themselves in Koopa City, a cyclist is seen making a head-on collision with a taxicab and getting electrocuted by the engine. Towards the end of the movie, after escaping from the Koopa Tower, the same taxicab appears with a skeleton on the hood.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Roger keeps blowing his lines, seeing tweeting birds instead of stars at the beginning of the film. Later, in Toon Town, Eddie Valiant gets brained and sees tweeting birds. And finally, during Roger's subverted Big Damn Heroes moment, he gets a pile of bricks dropped on him, causing him to see...
When Captain America and Nick Fury meet at the gym, Cap tells Nick that, by that point, nothing could possibly surprise him, and Nick bets $10 that Cap's wrong. Several scenes later, after watching a carrier lift off out of the water, Cap hands Nick a ten dollar bill without either saying a word.
The Hulk gets a little payback on Thor for their little fight on the Helicarrier. After they take down a Leviathan at Grand Street Station, Hulk punches the God of Thunder's jaw and sends him flying off-screen.
The second stinger has the group go to the shawarma place Tony recommended earlier in the movie. The shawarma place was nearly destroyed by the battle. No one speaks.
Also, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment earlier in the film, Tony crash lands outside that same shawarma place after destroying a leviathan.
During a scene on the SHIELD Helicarrier, Tony goes on a long-winded rant and specifically calls out a SHIELD agent for playing Galaga on a computer. The scene ends with said agent returning to his game of Galaga.
When Tony Stark is talking with Loki in Stark Tower near the end of the movie, Stark offers Loki a drink and he declines. Later, when the fighting is over, he comments that he'll have that drink now.
Anger Management has the main character almost taking a seat between two fat passengers before Buddy offers him one. The air marshal that assaulted the main character with a tazer had taken that seat, shown at the end of the film.
At the very start of Return of the Killer Tomatoes, there's a Framing Device wherein the movie is presented as a cheap television showing, complete with phone-in competition. In the first actual scene, George Clooney tosses pizza dough into the air and wanders off to do something else, with the pizza never coming down. In the 'climactic' showdown at the end of the movie, a telephone rings, and it's the presented of the TV spot. Another character comments about how smoothly they paid off the things they set up earlier in the movie...and the pizza falls out of the sky.
Alfred tells Bruce that he needs to learn to make his own bed. The first room Alfred checks in a search for Bruce is his bedroom - with the bed made.
When Gordon is trying to convince Foley to join the resistance, he says something along the lines of, "I'm not asking you to parade down Main Street in your dress blues." Guess what he does in the climax.
Fight Club, when the narrator and Marla are watching the buildings collapse, right before the movie ends a penis flashes on the screen (Tyler, while working at a cinema, would slide porno stills into kids' movies)
Dark Shadows features Barnabas reading from a book, back in the 19th Century, with a symbol deliberately similar to the McDonald's Golden Arches. After his return from the grave during the 70's, he is mystified when seeing the same symbol from a McDonald's sign.
In Apollo 13, astronaut Jack Swigert is reassigned to the mid-April mission at the last minute, and sheepishly admits on a broadcast from space that he forgot to file his income taxes before he left. Days later, as the astronauts are shivering and miserable on a crippled spacecraft limping towards Earth, Houston radios up:
CAPCOM: Jack. You'll be happy to hear that we contacted President Nixon, and he's gonna grant you an extension on your income taxes since you are most decidedly out of the country.
In Goon, when Glatt is being told about his teamates, one of them is described as playing hockey to work his way through med school. Later towards the end of the movie, one of their players gets checked hard in the tournament, and rather than trainers and the team doctor, the med student rushes over, takes off his helmet and gloves, and then administers first aid and calls for a stretcher.
In Jumanji, there's a single tired rhinoceros walking behind the animal stampede. It's later seen again when the stampede runs past in front of Aunt Nora's car.
Stephen: [as they are about to face Crash and the Boys] We can't beat them! This is a nightmare!
(later on...)
Scott: Oh my god...THIS IS A NIGHTMARE.
Another one:
Wallace: You have to use the L-word.
Scott: Lesbian?
Wallace: The other L-word.
Scott: ...Lesbians?
(later on)
Scott: [to Ramona] I'm in lesbians with you!
In The Kid 2000, the main character's younger self asks why the moon sometimes looks orange. At the end of the movie, a caption appears explaining why.
In Iron Man 1 the first thing Rhodey says to Tony after the latter has just escaped from spending 3 months in captivity is call-back to the last thing Tony said to him before being captured.
Happy chides Tony for "dirty boxing" during their workout. Later, when fighting a guard at Hammer Industries, Happy gains the upper hand by biting his ear.
The Mark 42 knocking into something and falling to pieces.
Literature
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: At the train station, Mrs. Weasley tells the twins that she doesn't want to hear that they've blown up a toilet again. George says that he's never done that, but acknowledges it would make a good present for a friend. When Harry is in the infirmary, they try to send him a toilet lid.
Also, upon first meeting Snape, he thinks that it is as if Snape can read minds (he thinks this again in book 2 as well). In book five we find out, that Snape is a master of Legilimancy (and Occlumency)
Early on in book 6, while the trio are having a discussion while doing homework, Ron Weasley's spell-checking quill wears out and corrects the spelling of his name to "Roonil Wazlib," much to Hermione's amusement. About 3/4 of the way through the book, after Harry has hidden his dark-magic-graffitied copy of Advanced Potion Making and replaced it with Ron's, we get this priceless moment:
Snape: This is your copy of Advanced Potion Making is it, Potter? Harry: Yes. Snape: You're quite sure of that, Potter? Harry: Yes. Snape: This is the copy of Advanced Potion Making you purchased from Flourish and Blotts? Harry: Yes. Snape: Then tell me, why does it have the name "Roonil Wazlib" written inside the front cover?
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. Shagga 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 teachers lounge 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 trying to eat her ears whenever she says "Pencil". About ten chapters or so after this, Leslie throws the classroom pencil sharpener out the window while learning about gravity, and mentions they'll need a new pencil sharpener.
Dark Future: Early in Krokodil Tears a news report mention the death of Wally The Whale, last living cetacean in the Atlantic and major tourist attraction for the Isle of Skye. The Mayor of Skye plans to have the whale preserved and open up a restaurant in his stomach named Jonah's Snackbar. Two hundred pages later, during the climactic fight between Jessamyn and the Jibbenainosay, Wally the Whale comes back to life. In the middle of the Bolivian ambassador's birthday party.
In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe short story collection Transmissions, the story "Only Connect" is about the Fourth Doctor working as a taxi driver and chatting to an architect, in the process learning the weak point of Chase Manor. The architect also mentions that a mad old lady claims the housing estate he's currently working on is being built on a plague-pit and this will awaken the restless dead, but he dismisses this as nonsense and the Doctor doesn't seem interested. The final story of the book involves the Eighth Doctor reliving memories related to all the other stories ... including the time the Fifth Doctor had to fight zombies on that very estate.
An example of the drama type: in the ninth book of the "How to Train Your Dragon" series, a seemingly small mark on Hiccup's forehead called the Slavemark which he gets in the seventh book. It remains dormant in the eighth, but in the ninth after he wins his swordfighting tournament against his father, wins the crown of King of the Wilderwest and delivers a speech on how the dragons need to be freed so they won't attack the humans his enemy Snotface Snotlout throws a rock at Hiccup's helmet, showing the Slavemark to everyone, forcing him to join the other slaves and throwing the Barbaric Archipelago into turmoil.
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch: At the conclusion to The Left Hand of Destiny, Chancellor Martok promises to repay a debt to his comrade/valet Pharh by sending a Sporak ground vehicle to Pharh's family on Ferenginar. In a later novel, Worlds of DS9: Ferenginar, a destitute Brunt gets a job driving a Sporak on Ferenginar...a Sporak which the owner insists was paid for by the Klingon chancellor, a claim Brunt finds dubious.
Discworld loves its brick jokes. Some play out within the same book, but some play out in later books. In Men at Arms, the sign on the post office has missing letters, for example GLO M OF NI T (instead of "gloom of night"). In Going Postal - eighteen books later - the protagonist notices the missing letters and gets to the bottom of it.
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.
And The Big Bang Theory. One episode has Sheldon tell the rest of the guys how wealthy Raj is and they complain about how cheap he is, like having Howard buy him a churro. When they go out to out at the end of the episode, they run out and leave Raj stuck with the check.
Father Ted, has a literal brick joke in the episode "Speed 3". Father Jack gains a pet brick, which later becomes critical in Ted's plan to rescue Dougal from an explosive milk float. Post-credits, Ted is taking out the trash when he spots something in the sky... and is struck head-on by the same 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?
Also, in one chapter the girls are in the balcony, drinking and telling stories of older times, when Rachel accidentally drops a cushion to the street. At the end of the chapter, someone calls to the door, and Chandler opens. A man returns the cushion.
Where they're at Jack and Judy's anniversary party, Phoebe is urged to eat an oyster by her annoying boyfriend, so she throws it away while he's not looking. Ten minutes later Joey reports his annoyance that he was about to get food, but 'slipped on a giant booger'.
Blackadder "Potato" has a literal example where Percy (weakly) throws a boomerang away, only for it to return and strike him on the back of the head after an unrealistically long delay.
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.
An episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has Dennis "hypothetically" stating for all anyone knows, he might be a maniac with a trunk full of duct tape and zip ties. Cut to five episodes later during the Season Finale, when Dennis reveals that he does indeed have multiple rolls of duct tape in his trunk, which he plans to use to kidnap some former classmates who were rude to him.
Another episode has Dennis mention to his Girl of the Week that he and the gang tried to shoot an unauthorized sequel to Lethal Weapon 4. It's treated as a throwaway line, but a later episode revolves entirely around the film in question.
There's another, more literal one. In "Remedial Chaos Theory," Annie tells Troy and Abed they really shouldn't be using a brick to hold their door open. Fifteen episodes later, a policeman coming to their apartment tells them the same thing—because it's an antique brick and could sell for up to $60. May be an intentional reference to the term "brick joke" as Dan Harmon is an admitted Troper.
Abed helps Shirley deliver her baby stating that he's done this before. When rewatching Season 2, you can indeed see him helping someone do so in the background.
My Name Is Earl: While Randy is fishing junk out of the river that a storm drain flows into, he says, "Another doll's 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 '70s 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 women's 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.
Longer still— in ''The Crusade'', a serial all the way back in season 2 of the classic series, Ian is knighted by Richard the Lionheart, with the First Doctor remarking that he'd like to be knighted himself, one day. 41 years later, the Tenth Doctor is knighted by Queen Victoria.
In series two, the Tenth doctor develops a fondness for the French phrase "allons-y" (Let's go), and wishes he had someone named Alonso to say it to. Over a year later, in Voyage of the Damned, he finally meets an Alonso. He is overjoyed.
In season one The Empty Child, Captain Jack Harkness says that Pompeii's a great place to visit, except you have to set your clock for volcano day. In season four The Fires of Pompeii, The Doctor says "We're in Pompeii, and it's volcano day".
This one has three parts: In the first series of New Who, there's a brief, off-hand mention of the Face of Boe being pregnant. In the first episode of Torchwood, aired about a year later, Jack vows that he's never going to get pregnant again. In the finale of the third series of New Who (another year later), it is strongly hinted that one day Jack might be the Face of Boe.
At the very beginning of the episode Smith and Jones, Martha Jones first meets The Doctor when he jumps out in front of her in a crowd of people and says "Like so." Then he takes his tie off and waves it in her face. When she arrives at the hospital, she sees The Doctor being examined. Technically, this is when The Doctor first meets her. The rest of the episode consists of the hospital being sent to the moon, avoiding an army of rhino-men and fighting a vampire. When that's finally over, The Doctor explains to Martha who, and what, he is, and that the police box is a time machine. When she doesn't believe him, he says he'll prove it to her, and gets inside the TARDIS and it disappears... only to re-appear seconds later, and he steps out, holding his tie in his hand and waving it at her.
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.
Kenan & Kel did an episode based on that Dick Van Dyke episode, but changed it a bit. The plot involves Kenan being suspicious of his parents (most of his baby pictures and things were washed away in a flood) and finding out there's a closely named person around his age named Kevin. The brick: since Kenan and Kel are African-American, Kevin and his parents are Asian.
On How I Met Your Mother, Marshall's slap bet with Barney turned into a Brick Joke spanning the entirety of the series to date. As of season 7, Marshall has been granted three additional slaps (one of which he used immediately), leaving him with three slaps remaining.
There are a lot of them in How I Met Your Mother. In S2E02, Ted enthusiastically tells Robin that he found a 1945 penny in the subway. Many episodes later, we see a flashback of Ted and Robin buying hotdogs with the money they just got from selling a 1945 penny Ted found on the subway.
In "The Pineapple Incident", Marshall is curious about why is there a pineapple in Ted's bedroom. In "The Third Wheel", we see a flashback fom that night where Ted and Trudy are making out while Ted holds the pineapple.
Also from "The Pineapple Incident", Ted claims he's "vomit free since '93". In "Game Night", Ted confesses that he threw up on Robin's carpet:
Marshall: I thought you were vomit-free since '93. So that was a lie?
The cold opening for one All That episode has Kenan blowing up a scarecrow, causing the Big Ear Of Corn to be kidnapped by Elvis and professional wrestlers. Later on, Lori Beth Denberg (as Miss Fingerly) kisses a stuffed monkey despite the superstition about what happens... then Elvis and the professional wrestlers come out and beat her up.
The IT Crowd has quite a few of these: In one episode, Roy gets caught in the handicapped bathroom at a theater and pretends to be disabled so he won't get in trouble. He tells the theater staff and police that his wheelchair was stolen by a bearded, red-haired man with glasses. Later, the police see a man matching that description leaving the theater and quietly take him away. In the same episode, Moss is caught using the employee bathroom and is mistaken for a new employee. Later, Jen goes to a party at the theater to find Roy in a wheelchair and Moss tending bar.
Another episode has Moss have a Eureka Moment, in which decides it would be better to leave his phone in his shirt pocket rather than his back pocket, for easier access. Later in the episode, he leans down to flush the toilet and his phone falls out. Even later in the episode, Moss gets stuck in a toy crane machine while trying to get an iPhone, and it isn't until the end of the episode that Jen realizes she forgot to get him out.
When Kevin Hart hosted in 2013, he appeared in a sketch with Tim Robinson which is a commercial for something called Z-Shirts. Tim asks what he has. Kevin asks "Is it an A-Shirt?" then "Is it a B-Shirt?" and so on. The sketch ends around "I-Shirt". A few sketches later, we see Tim officiating at his grandmother's funeral and invites the attendees to pay their respects. Kevin comes up and asks "Is it a W-Shirt?" and finally gets to "Z".
One episode of Corner Gas had Davis and Oscar trying to catch a mouse in the gas station. Oscar was going for the traditional mouse trap, while Davis was advocating being humane and letting the mouse go. He mentioned that, once, he'd nursed an owl back to health and released it. At the end, they catch the mouse, they let it go, they watch it scamper off into the world...and the same owl Davis rescued swooped down and carried off the mouse.
Eureka:
Over three seasons, characters on Eureka occasionally refer to something called an "Einstein-Grant Bridge" until in the season four opener, when they accidentally pull Dr. Grant into the future from his original timeline in 1947. Thereafter, they use the term we normally use for that object, the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, thereby proving that the timeline they had been in was different from our own.
In the series finale, Eureka gives us what may be the ultimate brick joke: We see Jack and Zoe drive out of the town and see themselves drive into it - this explains the same thing happening in the series pilot when they drive into Eureka for the first time.
In the Stargate SG-1 episode "The Fifth Race", Jack spars with Teal'c in a boxing ring. Teal'c knocks Jack over with one punch. Fast forward to "Upgrades", where with the benefit of a bodily-capabilities-improving Atoniek armband, Jack KO's Teal'c.
In Season 5 of The Office (US), in the episode "Prince Family Paper": Under instructions from the CFO David Wallace, Michael & Dwight travel to the small privately-owned Prince Family Paper to gather intelligence on the company. They initially revel in their "shark-like" mission but by the end of the episode, when he realises what the consequences of his actions will be, it's only reluctantly that Michael faxes Prince Family Paper's client-list and company structure to corporate. 7 episodes later in "Two Weeks", Michael, having given his two weeks' notice is looking for another job and brags to the camera that he's built up a number of contacts in his years in the business. The first number he calls is Prince Family Paper where he's greeted by a tearful recorded message regretfully informing their customers that after 40 years serving their community, they've been forced to close. Cut to Michael crossing off "Prince Paper" on his pad, leaving "Other Companies".
Also, Jim's letter to Pam from the Christmas episode in Season 2. He takes it off her desk before she sees it and puts it in his back pocket. In the second last episode of Season 9, he gives it to her. The audience isn't told what it says, so it's a sort of MacGuffin of their romantic relationship.
The first episode of It's Your Move opened with Matthew organizing an operation selling term papers. After looking at the sign advertising the service, he chews out his friend for misspelling "special" as "specal". Later, after Norman starts a relationship with his mother, Matthew tries to get rid of him by sending him a letter claiming that Newsweek is offering him a position. However, Norman turns it down and when he's alone with Matthew, he reveals that he knows Matthew wrote the letter. What tipped him off? Newsweek would never spell special "specal". (And he borrowed Matthew's mother's typewriter, so he recognized the typeface.)
Parks and Recreation had an episode where Leslie and Tom find marijuana growing in a community garden and try to find out who planted it. (They don't.) Later that season, Leslie meets with the former heads of the titular department for a picnic and one admits to planting marijuana in community gardens.
In a December 2012 intro to the BBC quiz show Only Connect, host Victoria Coren names four things she's not allowed within 100 yards of. The first sequence of round 2? Those four things, in order. (It was correctly guessed for 2 points.)
In a fall 1987 episode of Wheel of Fortune, at the top of the show Pat Sajak mentions that because he was talking to one of the show staffers right before going on air, he forgot to put a belt on. While signing off at the end of the episode, his pants fall down.
The West Wing has several, but this was particularly memorable:
Donna: Oh my God, you're putting my mother's cats on the Supreme Court!
A season one episode of The Middle about Brick's run for Class Historian, explores his tendency to forget about schoolwork and responsibilities until the last minute and then have Frankie do it for him. Four seasons later, with no mention in between, Brick is reminded of his role as Class Historian - to document the past four years of his class with pictures for a presentation, which is due that week, and which he has forgotten to do. Cue a request to Frankie, who finally tells him it's his problem and he needs to deal with it himself.
Multiple Media
In one of the Bionicle comics from 2004, the Kaiju Tahtorak randomly awakens in the city of Metru Nui, and goes on a rampage, demanding the other characters to answer a question that no one knows. In 2005, that question is revealed to be "How did I get here?" Later still, in one of the 2006 books, Brutaka reminisces about teleporting a Tahtorak into Metru Nui out of fun.
Music
New Age composer Vangelis invokes a Brick Joke structure in his Albedo 0.39 album. The first track, "Pulstar", ends with the British Post time recording. A voice is heard intoning "At the third stroke, it will be ten-three and forty seconds" followed by three beeps. Likewise for "ten-three and fifty seconds". At "ten-four precisely", the second track kicks in right where the three beeps should be. Just before the ending of track eight, "Nucleogenesis (Part II)", the music pauses and the listener hears a rotary telephone dial. The dialing is followed by three beeps and the climax of the track.
On Yes's album "Fragile," Jon Anderson's solo track "We Have Heaven," which starts out simply enough but quickly moves into an ever-increasing multitracked loop of Jon's voice, ends with a closing door blocking out the sound and footsteps running away. At the end of the final track, "Heart Of The Sunrise", which finishes abruptly on an imperfect cadence, there's a pause...and then the door opens, revealing "We Have Heaven" still going on, as presumably it has been throughout the rest of the album. Who says we prog rockers have no sense of humour, eh?
In the song "We Like Sportz" by The Lonely Island, Guy #2 says "...except for that cunt-hole Steve." Later, during "We'll Kill U", Guy #1 says "You're still a cunt, Steve. Go fuck your snake."
The Canadian Progressive band, Rush, pulled something akin to a Brick Joke: the last song of their album, A Farewell To Kings, is "Cygnus X-1", the tale of an astronaut who pilots his vessel into the eponymous black hole, hoping to use it as an "astral door"; it ends with him seemingly torn apart. The "A" side of their next album, Hemispheres, details the struggle between the gods of Reason and Passion to "rule the hearts of man". The struggle erupts into all-out war, which is only interrupted when... the astronaut from "Cygnus X-1" emerges into their midst.
The "Weird Al" Yankovic song "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" details the road trip the narrator once took with his family to the eponymous attraction. Early on, he makes brief mention of picking up a hitchhiker named "Bernie". Numerous verses later, they finally reach the twine ball.. and ask Bernie to take their picture. He instead runs off with their camera.
Another Weird Al song, "Albuquerque", starts with him explaining that the only problem with his early life was that his mother fed him nothing but sauerkraut until he was twenty-six and a half. Over the course of the eleven minute song, Al details his move to the eponymous city and the changes in his life. Near the end, he finally admits the entire song was a roundabout way of saying "I HATE SAUERKRAUT!"
Peter Schickele did this with the PDQ Bach grand opera "Oedipus Tex". In the introduction speech at concerts, or alternatively in the introduction track on records/CDs, he mentions that, while concert halls and lecterns and various parts of theatres often get corporate sponsorship, it's generally considered uncouth for them to sponsor the songs themselves. This digression is completely forgotten until forty-five minutes (or six tracks) later when suddenly one of the lines of one of the songs is replaced with "Drink Pepsi."
The Dubliners' "The Sick Note" could arguably work as one of these. The song is sung by a man who calls himself "Patty" and in the first verse he states that this is a letter written to his boss to explain why he won't be coming to work today. Over the course of the song, he continues to get into various forms of accidents, such as darting fourteen stories to hit a trolly with his head and having broken bricks land on him. The final words of the song then go: "Me body is all black and blue, me face a deathly gray / so I hope you'll understand why Patty's not at work today."
The Lonely Island does this in their song "Dreamgirl". The song opens with a monotone voice stating "The following song is brought to you by Chex Mix". They then proceed to sing a song about a "dream girl" who's actually horrible in every way, and for the last couple verses of the song (and the final chorus), it switches to a full-on song about how delicious Chex Mix is.
On one of Christine Lavin's live albums, she performs her song "Doris and Edwin: The Movie", which has a rather dark ending. She offers the audience the choice of having it turn out happily due to Doris wearing something that saves her from her fate. They usually say 'no', and do here. Later in the show (about 20 minutes later), she performs "Shopping Cart of Love- a play" in which the song's protagonist passes an accident-scene and the song's love-interest suggests everything would've been okay if only she had a prototype airbag-dress.
"I Hope You Die" by The Bloodhound Gang has one of these.
I hope you flip some guy the bird, He cuts you off and you're forced to swerve...
Then later...
And when you finally regain consciousness, You're bound and gagged in a wedding dress, And the prison guard looks the other way, 'Cause he's the guy you flipped the bird the other day!
The Genesis album Duke has a short track at the start called Guide Vocal where the eponymous character claims that "nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear." At the end of the penultimate track the guide returns to complete his statement: "Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand."
Captain Beefheart's album Strictly Personal begins with a blues parody called "Ah Feel Like Ahcid". The song goes into a phased section which leads into the next track "Safe As Milk", meaning we don't hear "Ahcid"'s real ending. Or so it appears at first. After the third track, "Trust Us", we hear more of "Ahcid", but it fades out and much later on, after the last (8th) track, Kandy Korn, we hear the final words of "Ahcid", "I ain't blue no more, wooo it's like heaven ahcid, ahcid" which close the album.
Power Metal band Dragonheart does this on their album Vengeance in Black. The first song on the album, Eyes of Hell, begins with a heavy, mid-tempo riff. The last song on the album, Spreading Fire, uses the same riff during the bridge section.
The video for Fall Out Boy's Thnks fr th Mmrs includes Pete Wentz getting a phone call from William Beckett of The Academy Is.... The video for We've Got a Big Mess on Our Hands, by The Academy Is..., has William making the call.
In the video for "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race" pretty much everything from their previous videos shows up at Pete Wentz's dream funeral, including Pete rising from the casket as a vampire, which he was in the "Less Than Sixteen Candles" video.
The Beatles did several of these, Sgt Pepper (Reprise) being the most obvious. There's also the last note of "Mean Mr. Mustard" at the beginning of the 'hidden track' Her Majesty on Abbey Road.
Queen's album "A Day At The Races" starts with an "Intro" of which the last 20 seconds are exactly the same as the last minute of the last track "Teo Torriate".
The insert for the Alex Day album Parrot Stories include the out-of-nowhere line "No horses were drowned in the making of this album." You finish the last listed track... and you hear the secret track The Drowning Horse Song.
An odd one occurs on Pink Floyd's The Wall album. The last thing you hear at the end of the album is a quiet voice asking, "Isn't this where...?" This matches up with the first thing you hear on the album: the same quiet voice saying, "...we came in?"
Jimmy Buffett pulls this off with two of his songs, released a year apart. 1986's "Who's the Blonde Stranger" (from his album Riddles in the Sand) details the travails of a husband and wife, Frankie and Lola, who each cheat on each other during a vacation trip to Galveston Bay, Texas. 1987's "Frankie and Lola" (from the album "Last Mango in Paris") returns to Frankie and Lola's life just as they're patching their marriage up after a short-term separation by taking "a second honeymoon in Pensacola", when each realizes that they truly do love each other.
Ben Fold's "Rockin' the Suburbs" warns that he's going to curse in the first half of the song. Half a song later he says fuck.
The Moody Blues did this at least once: On the album On the Threshold of a Dream, the first track ("In the Beginning") begins with a howling-wind sound effect which also ends the last track, "Have You Heard? Part 2".
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, because 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 later strip, Zoe learns that Hammie still sucks his pacifier in secret, at six years old.
In For Better or for Worse, Mike bought a doll named Naked Ned at a yard sale, thinking it an interesting curio. During college, he kept the doll suction-cupped to his dorm window; when he graduated, Mike and his roommate, Weed, argue over who gets to keep the doll. After Mike has retrieved the doll from Weed's girlfriend, it is flushed down the toilet. 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.
Bloom County once had a string of 4 strips where Opus repeatedly called 911 for non-emergency purposes like "There's a 465-pound woman across the street pruning her azaleas wearing pea-soup-green hot pants!!" Five days later, Steve Dallas was abducted by aliens, and the punchline to the scene was Opus calling 911 and their immediately hanging up.
Doonesbury did a literal brick joke in August of 1974 at the height of the Watergate scandal. As dialogue from President Nixon's secret tapes were shown, a brick wall was built in front of the White House. After Nixon's resignation, another strip was published on September 2nd showing the wall coming down.
A week-long arc of The Boondocks sees Huey and Riley struggling to find the perfect birthday present for their Granddad. Every potential gift turns out to be too expensive or hard to find in the suburbs; at the end of the week, they surprise Grandad with...absolutely nothing, to his disappointment. Later, Riley starts a campaign protesting rapper Shyne's jail sentence. While Riley's sitting outside with a sign that reads FREE SHYNE, a white man (who assumes that Riley can't spell) asks the boy to polish his Prada shoes. Riley steals the shoes and runs back home...where he gives them to Grandad as a belated birthday present.
Print Media
In Issue #41 of MAD (from 1958), the cover picture of Alfred E. Neuman is half-finished because the artist got a call from Time magazine. Cut to the article "The Next Day's Headlines" which shows disastrous headlines based on the advice columns shown on the previous page... and one about Time firing their new artist because all their people looked like Alfred E. Neuman.
The Onion did it with pictures. The front cover of the February 21, 2011 issue shows a picture of Blake Griffin jumping over a car with the headline "Car Blake Griffin Dunked Over Vows Revenge". Cut to the March 21, 2011 issue which has the cover showing a picture of Blake Griffin run over by a car with the headline "Car Blake Griffin Dunked Over Exacts Bloody Revenge".
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.
A brick with relatively short air-time — in one episode of Hello Cheeky, Tim announces that they'll be broadcasting Rigoletto in two parts. This is immediately followed by a cry of "Rigo—", and fifteen minutes later, we hear a yell of "—letto!"
Stand-Up Comedy
Many Comics may point out something in their anecdotes then later on use it as a punchline, leading those that come in later confused at why people are laughing so hard at something that seems unimportant.
The first Blue Collar Comedymovie has Jeff Foxworthy recounting a story told to him about a man who, upon hitting a beaver with his car, picked up said beaver upon mistaking it for dead, and managed to have it bite his nipple off. On a signature redneck joke to close the movie: "If you've ever had your nipple bitten off by a beaver, you might be a redneck."
Theater/Stage Shows
British mentalist/illusionist Derren Brown did it in two different stage shows.
In his third show, An Evening of Wonders, during the show broadcast on TV, he played a game of 20 Questions with several members of the audience. One, he sent back, saying he was too unsure of her object (brick number 1). Later, he performed the "Oracle Act" (it's billet reading). Seems one teenaged boy, on a dare from his friends, had written only the word "cock" on his billet, much to everyone's amusement (except Derren's, obviously) (and, by the way, brick number 2, although unintentional). Both bricks pay off at the end of the show, when he unrolls a big scroll that had been in a box since the beginning. On the scroll, he had written the word "bracelet" three times, and the lady that he had sent back revealed that she had thought of a bracelet during the 20 Questions segment. Upon finding this out, Derren said, "That kid's right, I am a cock!"
And then in his fourth show, Enigma, at the beginning of the show, he asked people in the audience to write down a list of their three favorite things, and he would have a member of the audience draw one, and then by the audience member saying random words, Derren would guess the items. The first item that was written down on the chosen slip, he guessed was a favorite band, but couldn't identify the band. Upon finding out that the band was Mc Fly, he simply said, "Never heard of them." Guess who performed a song revealing one of his predictions at the end of the show?
(about namehage) "Who drove the demons out of Akita?"
"This mystery will be unraveled in... (looks at watch) 14 minutes."
It is indeed revealed about 14 minutes later. A pun reveals it was Momotaro.
Bill Cosby has a story about the time him and Old Weird Harold went to a scary movie. They got so scared that they got down on the floor and didn't get up until 10 o'clock. They were so frightened on the walk home that when a wino stumbled a little too close to them, they trampled him in terror. Later, he tells another story about a game called "Buck Buck", which involves one team trying to get the other team to collapse under their weight. After their opposing team shows confidence in the fact that they would never collapse, Cosby's team brings out their secret weapon: Fat Albert. The opposing team surrenders the second they see him. "Now, I told you that story to tell you this one". Cosby then tells the story of the time they scared Fat Albert, but Cosby forgets that he was standing behind Fat Albert. He ends up in the hospital and shares a room with a wino who was trampled by two kids, and they both agree that frightened children are very dangerous.
Bill enjoyed this technique. His famous "Chocolate Cake for Breakfast" starts with his wife waking him up at weird o'clock in the morning so he can start making their children's breakfast. After some protest about how it's not healthy to eat this early, he heads down and gets to work, leading to a long and hilarious story about how his youngest asks for chocolate cake and he realizes how HEALTHY it is. (Eggs! Milk! Wheat! Oh, goody!) By the time, his wife comes down, all the kids are eating chocolate cake; she grows furious and they blame him...
"And my wife sent me ... to my room." (Smile) "Which is where I wanted to be in the first place."
In Ellen DeGeneres's stand up special Here and Now, early on, she talks about procrastination, and, quite appropriately, gets sidetracked. About an hour later, she returns to the topic out of the blue.
Also, in her later special The Beginning, she talks about needing silence in her life. Then she tells an increasingly bizarre story involving a vegan food shop, and a sex toy store, culminating in her being arrested while wearing nothing but a captain's hat and a paddle, along with her new blow-up doll named "Linda".
Cop (In story): You have the right to remain silent.
Ellen: And I was like "Thank you! That's what I've been looking for all along!"
Video Games
Tales Of Graces : Asbel never gets to cleaning his desk. Ever.
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 The 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.
The Monkey Island series is full of these. Throwaway lines like "I can hold my breath for 10 minutes" can come back into play much later. We say "can" because sometimes a punchline is delivered after the player has been allowed to roam around freely.
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 earned at his knight job for her to buy food. 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 Adventure Quest 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!
Also, at the very start of the game Sonic's birthday chilidog gets sucked up by the time rift that kicks off the plot. The very first thing that happens in the ending? Sonic catches the falling Chili dog and joyfully notes that it's still warm because he hasn't been gone for long in the real world.
Sonic Colors (Wii version): after defeating the first boss, the player sees in the proceeding cutscene that a part of the boss has gotten lodged in an energy tank of Eggman's interstellar theme park. When Eggman attempts to activate the Mind Control Cannon his theme park conceals near the end of the game, that same tank from the aforementioned cutscene explodes, creating a black hole and setting the stage for the final levels.
At the beginning of the Team Fortress 2 short "Meet the Medic", Medic finds his dove 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 dove got stuck inside him.
Scout: Oh man, you would not believe how much this hurts!
[a bird's cooing sound emits from the Scout's chest]
Medic: ...Archimedies?
This itself was the punchline of another brick joke, where the week when the Medic update started, Medics and Scouts would randomly have doves fly out of them if they get gibbed with no explanation.
Mass Effect: In the Upper Wards Market in the first game, there's a human talking to a turian shopkeeper about a refund. The turian repeatedly refuses to grant the refund on grounds that the customer doesn't have a proof of purchase. Later on in the second game he's outside a warehouse, still asking for his refund and still not getting it. After 5 years and 3 games Shepard finally has the choice to finish the guy's quest once and for all. It turns out it was for a toaster that cost 15 credits...
Combined with invertedChekhov's News in Tachyon: The Fringe. The combat portion of the Justified Tutorial consists of you fighting off a group of target drones that went haywire while you were evaluating a novice flight instructor. A news item later in the game reveals that the instructor went on to save the lives of her students when the same thing happened again.
If you use Malik's Eternal Serenade to finish off the final boss of the main arc in Tales Of Graces, he will claim that that will be the last time he will use that attack. Use it again in the future arc, and Sophie will call him out on it.
Spider-Man 2 has over a hundred Hint Markers (some not even Hints, but random trivia or possible adlibbing from Bruce Campbell), one of them says that, after every last one is collected, every marker will say "something different". Once you do... They all literally say "Something Different".
Golden Sun Dark Dawn has a few. The game begins with Karis telling Tyrell that Mars Adepts can't fly. Roughly two-thirds of the way through the game, you get a party member whose signature ability is Mars-based Not Quite Flight. Karis's reaction isn't shown.
Amiti, upon joining the party, is told to Please Put Some Clothes On. He wonders aloud if his current attire is distracting, but is told that they're going to the mountains and it will be cold there, which sounds like a flimsy excuse at the time. Then you end up in snowy mountain village Te Rya, and sure enough, Amiti complains about the cold.
And even later on, when you rescue Eoleo, he takes one look at Amiti and remarks that it's the first time he's seen an Ayuthayan "wearing real clothes".
In Mario And Luigi Partners In Time, the second tutorial boss is the Junior Shrooboid, who is green. Later in the game, the Elder Shrooboid, who is red, shows up as the last boss before the final boss rush. Unless you realize the series's running gag with green being younger than red, you're not going to realize that the Elder Shrooboid will exist, and you'll slowly start forgetting about this throughout the game, as most of the game is in between these two bosses.
In Half-Life the player can make a quick stop on the way to their HEV suit to go into a kitchen, play with a microwave and blow up whatever was inside. Three games later in Half-Life 2: Episode 2, almost ten years later real-life time, Arne Magnusson tells the player that he might forgive them for the Black Mesa incident..."involving a certain microwave casserole."
Early in Half-Life 2 mention is made of a cat that was used in a teleport test. Significantly later, Barney comments that he keeps hearing cats.
In Persona 4, when the crew first enters the TV world, Yosuke nearly wets his pants in the Ominous Bedroom. During the normal ending, when Teddie is trying to find Adachi, he comments that he "smells something funny" coming from that room.
In the same game, Nanako believes that the weather forecasters control the weather. In the Updated Rerelease, Marie becomes a weather forecaster who actually controls the weather.
In one instance, Yukiko jokingly says that Teddie wearing a cape will look very silly. Then comes the sequel, with Teddie actually Shadow Labrys makes his entrance with outfit that is better described as M. Bison inspired, Yukiko bursts out laughing.
Case 2 of Ben Jordan has a prospector lend Ben his car, which proceeds to get destroyed. When the case ends, the prospector asks "Has anyone seen my car?". Cue Oh Crap.
In the Borderlands 2 side-quest "Getting to Know Jack", you track down a series of audio logs detailing Handsome Jack's rise to power as CEO of Hyperion Corporation. In one of these, he strangles an underling for bringing up Jack's late wife, and makes a note to his lackey Mr. Blake on the difference between choking and strangling. In the last audio log, the then-president of Hyperion claims to be unafraid of Jack's blackmail attempts, to which Handsome Jack responds "Maybe you could clear something up for me... do you know the difference between choking and strangulation?"
The ZX Spectrum game Ricochet has a ridiculously long scroller which is notorious for a joke about a yellow brick. Click the link to read it in an online emulator (requires a Java-enabled browser).
In Shin Super Robot Wars, Boss is about the only one whose machine wasn't somehow handed down by the family, but Kouji observes that the Boss Borot is mainly just in the way. Boss takes umbrage at this, but with his lackeys in tow he plans to one day build the Boss Borot into one hell of a machine. Later on, Mucha shows up piloting the Borot, claiming that he's taken it without telling Boss, entitled by all the hard work he put in. He's not too worried about reprisals from Boz, who is unlikely to be able to follow all the way to space, and has even installed a Map Weapon! It also turns out that the Boss Borot's map weapon, though powerful, is totally impossible to aim.
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, though this also has heavy flavours of Book Ends
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 second 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 Roxy attempts to prove to Jane that she has an appearifier by appearifying the very same book. Right on top of her pet cat.
In Hivebent, some of the trolls use "special stardust" to try and fix up things around them. Turns out it doesn't have any special properties whatsoever. But it is a Cherub's favorite snack.
The longest one to date: one of the very first commands in Homestuck was for John to retrieve his arms, and now, 5th of april 2013, using the "ultimate weapon", John'sareeverywhere.
xkcd. In addition to the two strips that provide the page image, there's also the SuperSoaker.
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.
Questionable Content does a quick and somewhat backwards one here. An initially pointless anecdote about disgusting smoothies is made, and the comic veers off in another direction. Just when you think it's over, someone orders a smoothie.
Scandinavia and the World Three years and over 200 comics later, Norway brings up the "marriage" that happened in the very first comic.
In the PVP strip for January 24th 2000, Brett "predicts" that Francis will lose his virginity on May 24th 2008. In the strips for May 23rd and 26th 2008...
League Of Super Redundant Heroes does this with rectal itching ( really... ). First time round is in Laser Pony's origin story, with the payoff a couple of frames later... months later, Maroon Canary appears to have the same issue...
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 (but not its severed leg, oddly) 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 email #55, "cheat talk", Strong Bad waits patiently for Strong Mad (and The Cheat) to say the word "Douglas" (and jams his keyboard into Strong Sad's stomach to get him to say the word). In an Easter Egg for email #76, as Strong Bad tries to get other characters to say "Fhqwhgads", Strong Mad instead says, "DOUGLAS!", to which a surprised Strong Bad says, "Whoa! We've just had a breakthrough! You get a gold star."
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 email #103, "haircut", Strong Bad, while coming up with various eyebrow-cuts for Strong Mad, randomly comes up with one looking like a character from Sweet Cuppin' Cakes, a cartoon he invented in an earlier email, whom he immediately dubs "Ready for Primetime". Fast forward to the Decemberween in July Sweet Cuppin' Cakes short; at the very, very end, guess who makes an unexpected appearance?
Near the beginning of the Strong Bad Email pet show, Strong Bad catches Homestar trying to put relish on his boots ("Homestar's always trying to give me the old relish-foot.") Near the end of the cartoon, Strong Bad and the Cheat are disqualified from the pet show not because of the cheating they actually did, but for "flagrant use of relish-foot" (the cause of which is implied to be Homestar).
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.
113. There is absolutely no need to emulate the people from Full Monty every time I hear the song "Hot Stuff".
131. No dancing in the turret. This especially applies in conjunction with rule #113.
4Chan had a few people do these - one example where someone mentioned something about Code Geass, then someone posted a Slowpoke picture saying he'll respond in two years. Two years later, he responded.
2: Llama drives off cliff. 2 years later in 5: Llama finally hits ground.
Code MENT has a few of these. In episode 3, Milly says that Kallen is being indicted to the Student Council. Cue five episodes later...
Lelouch: Induction!
Milly: Huh?
Lelouch: Induction - to formally admit to an organization or group. You said 'indicted'. Indictment - the formal accusation that a person has committed a crime.
Milly: But that was three months ago. And now all you did is prove that you didn't know both words at the time.
Lelouch: Doh!
And another:
In Episode 6:
Guilford: Hell, I stole your watch before you got in here.
Jeremiah: So that's where that thing went.
Guilford: Yeah, I lost it though.
Jeremiah: Damnit, that was a Rolex!
Then Later:
Lelouch: You see a Rolex I lifted off some guy yesterday? You'd better not be touching my stuff.
In a later episode:
Lelouch: Suzaku, listen very carefully. I'm about to get seriously effed right now, so I need you to relay a message. Tell the girl with green hair in my room to NOT TOUCH MY STUFF!!!
After meeting C.C. dressed in Lelouch's "One" clothes later:
Lelouch: Blargh! Who are you?!
C.C.: [Unmasks] You really are a moron, aren't you? Well, what do you have to say for yourself?
The Phase novels in the Whateley Universe love the Chekhov's Gun tropes, so this pops up regularly. In the fourth Phase book, Phase considers the problems of a mutant-website-only web-spider. In the fifth book, Phase uses this as a trap. In the first Tennyo story, we learn something of her backstory, which is further fleshed out in a later Team Kimba adventure. Years later (real time), her backstory is weaponized against her in the seventh Phase story.
Contesting 8-Bit Theater for longest Brick Joke ever is Red vs. Blue, with what actually happened to "poor Florida" from the first few episodes revealed at the end of Season 10, almost a decade later.
The AnimutationIrrational Exuberance starts by presenting a series of anthropomorphic fruit mascots under the slogan "Fruit Sells", such as "Rotten Apple Joe" ("Rotten Apple Computers"), "Applegrape Joe" ("Fruity Loom Incorporated"), and "Banana Joe" ("Banana Public Inc."). About halfway through, more fruit-themed mascots are presented, and the last one is... "fitness guru and short-shorts pioneer" Richard Simmons.
Captain Hammer's "Everyone's a Hero" song in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is cut short by Dr. Horrible's Freeze Ray. Horrible goes on to sing his own song before Hammer unfreezes - and when he does, he completes the line he was in the middle of.
Captain Hammer: "Everyone's a hero in their—"
Hammer (a whole song later, and after punching Horrible across the room): "WAAAAAAAAAY!"
Glasgow disappears at the beginning of the second Marvel arc of WAOAA, and disappears from the plot for a while. When inside Brainiac's ship, the fate of the city becomes abundantly clear: It's part of his collection now.
Used at the end of Suburban Knights. At the beginning, The Nostalgia Critic rounds up everyone at his house by tricking them into thinking that they won a car. At the end, however, everyone leaves after he finds yet another thing he wants their help in looking for. The very last scene?
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. With the same theme music in the background no less.
In the first episode "Rollercoaster", Linda remarks that Candace is in charge in case of a satellite crsahing through the roof of the house. Later, when the rollercoaster train is flung into space, Phineas spots a satellite going by and says "You know, if that thing crashes through the roof, Candace is in charge."
In "Sci-Fi Pie Fly", Doofenshmirtz complains that one of his attempts at getting even with a pizza guy backfired when he turned his "exploding pizza dough" into a promotional gimmick. Near the end of the episode, Candace orders a pizza that turns out to be the exploding kind.
In "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", the hovercar's platform falls over and destroys a chunk of the house, which gets the boys sent to military school Later, Jeremy walks in and says he came in through the big hole in the door, to which Candace says that the boys would have fixed it by then.
Listing all the Phineas and Ferb brick jokes would be a page in itself.
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.
Megas XLR loves this trope. It occurs almost Once an Episode. In the pilot, for example, Coop misfires a missile, which strikes a PoPTV satellite. When the bad guys combine their Mechs into a ridiculously huge final robot and is about to crush the cast said satellite crushes into it.
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?
Teen Titans: A loonnggg one. In season 1 episode 6 "Nevermore", Dr. Light angers Raven, causing her to lose control to her dark side, growing in height and using shadow tentacles to drag Dr. Light under her cloak. When the other Titans snap Raven out of it, Dr. Light is uncovered from Raven's cloak, pale and shivering, muttering about the darkness, implying some psychological problems. Three seasons later, in season 4 episode 3 "Birthmark", the Teen Titans are fighting Dr. Light again. Just as they're at a stalemate, Raven appears behind Dr. Light, again grown in height and wielding shadow tentacles (though staying in control this time). Dr. Light immediately goes pale and asks to surrender.
Raven: "Remember me?"
Dr. Light: [Beat] "I'd like to go to jail now please."
While the Titans are wandering Tokyo in the movie, Raven is handed a pack of "Super Twinkle Donkey Gum" at a newsstand. At the end, she appears on a bilboard as the brand's new mascot.
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 guppy 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 Garfield SpecialGarfield Goes Hollywood has a roller-skating bear that Jon, Garfield, and Odie see as one of the acts when they enter Pet Search. Later, there is a man named Herbie who spent 18 years training his pigeons to tap-dance, but when he presents them, they immediately fly away...and, to add insult to injury, the roller-skating bear skates into the scene and knocks into him.
In the exact same special, when Jon happily says that there is only one more act after theirs, Garfield comments that with their luck, it would be a dog that plays five instruments at once. Take three guesses what the last act of the show was. (Although, he got disqualified because he was actually a human in a dog suit.)
Ruby Gloom loves these. An early episode starts off with a game of hide and seek that is quickly forgotten as it becomes a murder-mystery. When the victim is finally found at the episode's end, it gets tagged by the seeker.
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, whilst 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."
An extreme example in the episode "Ned N Edna's Special Blend" where a billboard in the opening sequence says "Sleazy Sam's, Remember That Name". At the very end of the episode, a store owned by Sleazy Sam is opened.
The Mary Poppins parody has the family's nanny, Sherri Bobbins, lose her umbrella to Grandpa Simpson at the end of the second act as he's last seen flying off with it. At the every end of the episode when she leaves them, she picks it up from an unconscious Grandpa, revealing that he crashed into the house sometime after that.
In "Beyond Blunderdome", Homer helps make a movie and suggests making the villain a dog. He explains that the viewers would suspect the dog if he had shifty eyes. Guess what appears at the very end of the episode?
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 always come back!"
In the same show, the episode "The Cave of Two Lovers" features the nomads singing the eponymous song:
Nomad: …'a mountain divides them apart!'…and, uh, I forget the next part, but then it goes…'SECRET TUNNEL!…'
The same nomad, half an episode later: Hey, I just remembered the rest of that song! 'AND DIED…'
Made even funnier in that he remembers the part about death just as they're talking about possibly becoming lost in the cave forever.
In the season 1 episode "The Spirit World (Winter Solstice, Part I)", Sokka is kidnapped by a spirit and taken into to the spirit world. When Aang saves him at the end of the episode, Sokka remarks that he really needs to use the bathroom. In the season 3 episode "The Avatar and the Firelord", Aang's behavior during his spirit vision of Roku prompts Katara to ask if the spirit world has bathrooms...to which Sokka responds that he knows for a fact that it does not.
In the same episode, Iroh uses his smelly sandal as a track for Zuko, who, 2 and a half seasons later, uses it to track him with June's shirshu.
In 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.
In Ponyville Confidential, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo are under the mistaken impression that the way they will use the school newspaper to get their cutie marks is by making arts and crafts out of the paper, and Scootaloo patches up a bird's nest with it. Later, when the CMCs become writers for the school newspaper, Scootaloo, desperate for a story, decides to go to the same birds nest to get a story, but falls out of the tree and ends up covered in mud.
A multiple-episode spanning example: In Party of One, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash make up a story about having to house/cave sit a bear who lives in a cave that's like a house so that they don't have to go to Pinkie's party. Over a season later, in Too Many Pinkie Pies, It turns out that there really is a bear who lives in a house-like cave.
In "Carnival Knowledge", Rocko and Heffer decide to spend a day at a carnival. Little do they know it's full of rigged games. One game finds him trying to flip a frog onto a lilypad; pissed off by the frog's big mouth, he accidentally knocks it into the sky, forcing him to quit the game. Later, Rocko rides a roller coaster that goes so high that it leaves Earth's atmosphere. Guess who he finds up there, still calling him a loser? Then, after the diastrous roller coaster ride ends, a frustrated and spent Rocko decides to head home after being fleeced at every turn. Suddenly, there's a loud WHOOSH!, and the frog sails back down to Earth, landing perfectly on one of the lilypads. Shocked that someone finally beat one of his rigged games, the carnival's owner reluctantly gives Rocko a prize.
In "Teed Off", Heffer is seen goofing off at his job as a groundskeeper at the golf course by writing crop circles in the turf. At the end of the episode, a pair of aliens land in the golf course after dark to examine the crop circles, and one of them says "Who keep writing this stuff?!"
In an episode of Justice League, Deadman possesses Superman while he's telling Wonder Woman about a restaurant ("They have milkshakes so thick...*possess* I need your help!" "That IS thick.") At the end of the episode, when Deadman finally leaves, Supes picks up right where he left off ("...You need a spoon to eat them. (Beat) What am I doing in Africa?")
In the teaser to one episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Steve makes fun of Dr. Weird by posing as him and shouting "Fill me with BBQ sauce because I'm dumb as hell!" A few episodes later...
Steve: Actually, you said there's no chance this will work.
Dr. Weird: [looks back to a contraption pumping him full of BBQ sauce] FOOL! THAT WILL NEVER WORK!]
In the The Cleveland Show episode "Pins, Spins and Fins! (Shark Story Cut for Time)", a man working at a bowling alley (high from huffing shoe spray) has a hallucination where one of the bowling balls tells him to burn down the local retirement home. At the very end of the episode, a newspaper headline reveals that 88 people died in the burning home because the fire department was busy saving an abandoned amusement park (which Donna accidentally set on fire).
In the Family Guy episode "Lois Kills Stewie", when the family is tied up in rope, they decide to pass the time by starting a celebrity rumor. Peter suggests that Rob Schneider takes illigal immigrants from Home Depot and pays them to choke him in the shower. Later, it's shown to be apparently true.
Immigrant: Senor Rob Schneider, you must come and see this!
Rob Schneider: I don't pay you to watch TV, now get in the damn shower!
In "Brian Sings And Swings", Peter, thinking Frank Sinatra Jr. is a bad influence on Brian, calls his "mother", Mia Farrow. Guess who shows up at the end to give Frank a spanking.
In "When You Wish Upon A Weinstein", Peter worries about entering a synagogue with his Christian upbringing, with a group of nuns being alerted of such to illustrate the point. Then at the end, the Griffins seek refuge from an angry mob inside a bus. Guess who's in there waiting to whack Peter with rulers.
In "Trading Places", a cutaway gag shows Peter working as a police sketch job and making racist drawings (which got him fired). Later in the episode, when Chris gets off work and asks if his day can get any worse, he's promptly mugged by a man with Peter's drawing for a head.
In "Believe It Or Not, Joe's Walking On Air", Cleveland states at the beginning that he hates shows that cut from the story to "some bullcrap". The scene then cuts to an image of Adolf Hitler riding a unicycle juggling. Later in the episode, Peter says that they have to "re-cripple" Joe (Who during the episode had surgery to get new legs), and says it's the right thing to do, "like taking out Hitler". It then cuts back to the clip of Hitler riding the unicycle, but this time Peter runs in, knocks him off, and punches him in the face, stating to the viewer, "See? We had a plan for that all along".
In one of the longest brick jokes, in "To Love and Die in Dixie", Peter and Brian have painted the car to resemble the General Lee. When they try to jump in it, Brian just slams into the door and is knocked unconscious. A whole season later in "Fat Guy Strangler", during the standoff with Patrick, Peter is being held captive. Brian picks up a rock, throws it, it hits Peter in the head, and they have this exchange.
Peter:You missed!
Brian:No I didn't. That's for rolling up the damn window when I tried to jump into the General Lee.
In the "American Dad" episode "With Friends Like Steve's", Stan awakens to mentally insane teenager Barry holding a gun to him. When Stan asks where Francine is, it is revealed that she is buried alive in the back yard. At the end of the episode, Stan is driving Barry home and remarks to Steve, "I'm hungry, let's go dig up your mother to make us something to eat".
Even better: in the Season 1 episode "Roger Codger" (aired June 5, 2005), Roger is disguised as an elderly woman and meets Gertie, who he describes as "a nasty, old, racist sidekick"; at the end of the episode, when the FBI has the family cornered, they pull Gertie's wig off and pass her off as the escaped alien. Fast forward to February 20, 2011, and the Season 6 episode "You Debt Your Life" sees Roger and Stan going to Area 51: as they walk through the military base, they pass a tube that has an unconscious Gertie suspended in liquid.
In a Cutaway Gag in Gravity Falls Gruncle Stan has the kids forge money, but he remarks that their Benjamin Franklin looks like a woman. Several Episodes later when they find the repository of Americas Embarrassing secrets it includes a folder about which Mabel remarks:"Oh man, Benjamin Franklin secretly was a woman!"
Near the start of "Evicted!", Finn shoos a worm off his bed. At the end of the episode, after Finn and Jake reclaim their tree house, they find dozens of the same type of worm crawling around the living room, and Finn says accusingly "Did you guys get on the bed?"
Near the start of "The Other Tarts", Princess Bubblegum mentions that she needs to find a replacement for the Royal Tart-Toter, who's getting old and senile. The episode ends with the blind, deaf, and delirious Tart-Toter barging into the Back-Rubbing Ceremony and going into a pseudo-philosophical rant.
Code Lyoko: In the episode "Image Problem", Jérémie jokes about the scanners having negative health effects in reference to Yumi/XANA being devitalized before she can tell the group what happened. Some 15 episodes later, XANA impersonating Franz Hopper "confirms" that the scanners have a negative effect.
(Blooper) Bunny, a 1991 Bugs Bunny cartoon, shows a brief dance clip with Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and Yosemite Sam. Then we see several outtakes of the dance routine. In one, Bugs stops suddenly, shouting, "Hold it, Doc! There's a loose floorboard." Later, after Elmer tries to shoot Bugs and Daffy with a real rifle instead of his prop gun, Daffy goes ballistic on Elmer(with Bugs trying to get the camera to cut). Daffy proceeds to storm off after telling Elmer, "Expect to hear from my attorneys about this unfortunate incident." He then steps on the loose floorboard, which whacks him in the face.
In the Wallace And Gromit short "A Grand Day Out", Wallace tests the moon's gravity by kicking a ball into the air, but it doesn't come down and floats through space. At the very end of the credits, we see the ball still floating through space.
American Dragon Jake Long: At the beginning of "Bring It On", Professor Rotwood was escorting students through the museum when he accidentally broke a statue. He quickly told the students they saw nothing. Neither him nor the incident have been mentioned again until the end credits, when he phoned his mother for bail money because he was arrested for it.
Brier Beauty of Ever After High jumping out a window on a whim is already pretty funny. Prince Daring catching her, because it's "kind of (his) thing" is hilarious.
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 Consciousness "Jabberwocky"-like testimony, Stengel revealed that he was really the Bunny-Ears Lawyer of baseball. And the brick joke? That would be Mickey Mantle's One-Liner at the very end.
, which seems at first blush 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. See also Late to the Punchline, which is where a character who doesn't get a joke finally gets it, making it a kind of Brick Joke for that character. The Flying Brick, however, refers to something else entirely. See Comeback Tomorrow if the character finally delivers their late comeback to a confused opponent.
