Cuckoo Clock Gag

Aside from alarm clocks for the Ring-Ring-CRUNCH! or Sleepless Alarm Clock gag, cuckoo clocks are probably the most comedic type of clock there is. With the clock striking every hour and the goofy little bird coming out of it making a "cuckoo" noise, these are bound to be Played for Laughs.

This trope can come in a number of flavors:

• The clock itself is custom-made to fit the person or location it belongs to, resulting in cuckoo clocks that have something other than the classic cuckoo to announce the hours.
• The cuckoo is used as a metaphor that a character is (perceived to be) crazy
• The cuckoo is used as a metaphor for adultery (since it lays its eggs in other birds' nests)
• The clock going cuckoo startles a person, leading to a humorous situation.
• A person is injured by the cuckoo bird coming out.
• In slapstick comedies, a cuckoo clock is smashed onto a person's head with the bird coming out of their mouth.

These clocks are traditionally associated with Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and northeastern France.

See also Cock-a-Doodle Dawn, Polly Wants a Microphone, and Noisy Duck for other noisy birds.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In this commercial for the Dutch insurance company Centraal Beheer, a man is driven nuts by his girlfriend's cuckoo clock, which goes off at the most inconvenient times and keeps startling him. Eventually, he grows so frustrated, he destroys the clock...only to learn from a TV show about antiques that the clock was a valuable masterpiece worth 90.000 Euros.

Comic Books

• Asterix: Asterix in Switzerland plays with the trope, as actual Cuckoo Clocks had not been invented yet in the time the story is set. Instead, we see an Innkeeper who loudly yells "Cuckoo!" every hour, prompting his guests to turn the hourglass next to their beds.
• Lucky Luke: in " Les Dalton à la noce" (The Wedding Crashers), several custom-made Cuckoo Clock can be seen: the undertaker has a Cuckoo Clock that has bones as clock handles, and instead of a cuckoo a skull pops out (though it still makes the classic "cuckoo" sound), the saloon has a clock where the cuckoo is replaced by a drunk man making the sound of an Alcohol Hic, and the station master has a Cuckoo Clock where the cuckoo is a steam locomotive making the sound of a steam whistle. There is also a scene where Luke visits a clockmaker, and all the Cuckoo Clocks on the wall behind him go off simultaneously, which startles Luke into drawing his gun.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "Better Luck Next Time," Billy is setting all the clocks in the house, including Grim's cosmic cuckoo clock with a rather demonic cuckoo bird inside. Messing with it causes Billy and Mandy to be sucked in and transported through time.
• Monica's Gang: In "The Genius", Franklin invents a clock that only goes cuckoo if nobody nearby is expecting it to. Though the device appears to be just a comical display of the boy's ineptitude as a scientist, it turns out to be a Chekhov's Gun, as it reappears later on and starts making loud noises while the heroes are trying to sneak past an Eldritch Abomination.

Comic Strips

• Garfield:
  • In this comic, Garfield is sitting next to the cuckoo clock on the chimney mantel, and brags how monday is almost over and nothing bad happened to him all day. Then the clock strikes midnight and the cuckoo knocks Garfield off the mantel.
  • In this strip, Jon says he wonders what time it is. A cuckoo clock is heard off-panel and Jon yells in pain before clarifying that it's three. Garfield comments that Jon stood too close to the cuckoo clock.
  • In this comic, Odie does an impression of a cuckoo clock using his tongue with a cuckoo bird on it.
  • In this comic, Garfield is patiently waiting in front of a cuckoo clock till the cuckoo will come out again. It's left ambiguous whether or not he knows the bird is not real.
• Madam & Eve: The neighborhood Mielie Lady^note A street vendor who sells ears of corn while loudly yelling "MIELIE!" gifts Mother Anderson a cuckoo clock in this strip.◊ No points for guessing what the cuckoo bird has been replaced with.
• The Wizard of Id. The King gets an omniously ticking package, so orders it dunked in the moat to defuse it. When the package is opened, it turns out to be a cuckoo clock sent by the Lone Haranguer.
  Cuckoo: (squirting water in the King's face) The King [glug] is a fink! [glug]

Eastern European Animation

• The Hungarian 2005 short film Maestro is about the minutes before a "maestro" cuckoo bird's show in a cuckoo clock and his preparation for it as aided by a mechanical assistant.

Fan Works

• Adjacency: In Chapter 2, Twilight gets a new cuckoo clock by surprise, since it's actually Trixie in disguise.

Films — Animation

• Disney Animated Canon
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Dwarfs have two: one at their mine to sound quitting time, with two little dwarfs striking an anvil; and a larger, more elaborate one at their cottage that has a frog sound the time.
  • Pinocchio: Geppetto has a large array of imaginatively designed clocks at his workshop with different figures sounding the time — a hunter shooting at a turkey, a mother spanking her child, a drunk in a bar hiccupping, and even a traditional cuckoo bird with three hatchlings.
  • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Pooh has a "Pooh-coo clock" with him inside a honey jar sounding the time.
  • Treasure Planet: when Jim and Morph first meet B.E.N., and it's clear the robot has a few screws loose, Morph pretty much sums up the audience's opinion by changing himself into B.E.N, with a cuckoo clock-style cuckoo popping out of B.E.N.'s head.

Films — Live-Action

• Ace of Aces: At the Berghof (his Bavarian mansion), Adolf Hitler has a cuckoo clock... which has a little German eagle making a nazi salute instead of a classic cuckoo.
• The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland: Elmo is awakened by a clock that has a little bird come out of it and scream, "WAKE UP!".
• In the 1937 movie The Awful Truth starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, a fantasy sequence involving a cuckoo clock ends the comedy about a feuding couple. At first the characters, costumed as Germans, emerge from their separate cubbyholes, dance, and return. After a discussion about making up, the film ends when Grant follows Dunne into her clock cubbyhole and the door shuts.
• Back to the Future: Downplayed. The film opens on the ticking of Doc Brown's extensive clock collection in his workshop, which includes a few quirky ones (including one with a cartoon man hanging off the minute hand). When the clocks all go off, a cuckoo clock sound is heard in the background, just as Doc reveals to Marty that the clocks are part of an experiment — they're all 25 minutes slow, making Marty late to school.
• In By The Sea 1915, a drink is thrown over a cuckoo clock. The cuckoo then turns upside down and starts cuckooing drunkenly.
• In WeeSing: Grandpa's Magical Toys, one of the titular toys is a cuckoo bird that leaps from her clock whenever someone says the word "Time," eager to tell everyone the hour. It gets to be a Running Gag, especially because Cuckoo doesn't actually know what time it is in nearly every instance.

Literature

• In Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten he reveals that he is a big fan of cuckoo clocks. At one point he bought a cheap foreign knockoff. It never worked. The bird got stuck inside, and after a couple attempts at getting it loose he discovers the bird had broken loose and was lying inside the case with a spring around its neck.
  Not many people have murdered a cuckoo-clock bird, but I had done it.
• In Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, after the protagonists have successfully mastered Klugarsh Mind Control, Alan uses it to make the principal sing "Surfin' With My Horse" over the P.A. instead of delivering his normal morning address. After the song finishes, Leonard focuses his mental powers to further the prank by causing the principal to say, "I WILL NOW GIVE THE CORRECT TIME," and then imitate a cuckoo clock. Their class, of course, explodes into hysterics.
• Discworld is home to the Clock-Building Cuckoo, because how else would people get such a strange idea? Some people think it's a miracle of nature, but others point out they don't even keep good time.

Live-Action TV

• 'Allo 'Allo!; At one point Rene attempts to conceal stolen gold by disguising it as a clock weight and hanging it on a cuckoo clock. This makes the clock run at several times its normal speed, with frantic cuckooing drawing attention to it at awkward moments.
• The Banana Splits Adventure Hour: The Splits' clubhouse has a clock containing a large bird's head, which usually announces the next segment. It also cracks corny jokes:
  Fleegle: Say, cuckoo. What time is it?
  Cuckoo: It's 10:27. Except February which has 28!
• The Benny Hill Show: In one sketch, Benny plays a gunslinger named The Halitosis Kid, who is infamous for his horrible breath that causes chaos and destruction wherever he goes. At one point, the kid is standing next to a cuckoo clock as it begins to announce the time, and his volatile breath causes the mechanical cuckoo to fall out of the clock.
• In "Duel and Duality" in the third series of Blackadder: When the Prince declares that he will give Blackadder everything he owns, Blackadder checks that this includes the amusing clock where the little man comes out and drops his trousers every half-hour.
• A puzzle on The Crystal Maze was that after doing a jigsaw of a cuckoo, the player then had to find the crystal behind the little door on a cuckoo clock in the room.
• In one episode of Hogan's Heroes, Colonel Klink asks Hogan what the POWs think about him. It's then that Klink's clock goes off and goes "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!". Hogan laughs and says the clock took the words right of his mouth.
• Imagination Movers: In "Clock Shock", one of the Where is Warehouse Mouse? shorts, Warehouse Mouse is trying to sleep, but his cuckoo clock keeps chirping and waking him up. He manages to silence it by nailing an X of boards over the cuckoo doors, but only briefly, as the cuckoo bird suddenly chirps out of the clock's face. After unsuccessfully trying to hide the clock in his toy chest to silence it, Warehouse Mouse puts on some earmuffs so he can't hear the clock chirping.
• Done in an episode of My Name Is Earl When Earl tells Randy that he, Randy, needs to go back to High School for a list item. A cuckoo clock that Randy is holding immediately rings. Earl and Randy are both weirded out by this.
• The children's TV show Play School featured "Cuckoo's Clock", with an oversized cuckoo which never moved.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: "The Reptile Room" parts 1 and 2 feature a screeching iguana clock owned by Uncle Monty, which screeches every hour. It causes Stephano (Count Olaf in disguise) to become comically startled in the scene where the clock is first introduced.
• Sooty and Co.: In "Clocks Galore", Sooty is trying to read, but keeps getting bothered by the noises that various clocks make, one of which is a cuckoo clock. Sooty pulls out an ACME Cuckoo Gun and shoots the cuckoo bird with it.
• The Two Ronnies: In the serial "Stop! You're Killing Me", Charley cannibalises a cuckoo clock for a device intended to blow the bedsheet off a Bedsheet Ghost. Consequently every time the device is triggered, it makes a 'Cuckoo' sound.
• Used in an episode of Would I Lie to You?; Lee Mack had to claim he was pecked in the eye twice while closely inspecting a cuckoo clock at precisely 2pm. (It was a lie.)

Theatre

• Discussed in "So Long, Farewell" in The Sound of Music, in which the Von Trapp children mourn the fact that it's time to go to bed with a cutesy song, where they act out the cuckoo clock.
  There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
  And the bells in the steeple too
  And up in the nursery an absurd little bird
  Is popping out to say "cuckoo"
  Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Theme Parks

• Disney Theme Parks: The entrance to "it's a small world" has a musical clock tower, which announces the time with a parade of children from many lands emerging from the clock, that goes off every 15 minutes. As Walt Disney once said about it, "There are quicker and quieter ways to find out the correct time, but they're not as much fun."

Video Games

• Club Penguin: The ski lodge has a cuckoo clock that goes off every half-hour. The clockwork bird's name is Fred the Clockwork Cuckoo, or otherwise simply Fred.
• Gobliiins: When a big key is found, it is used to wind a cuckoo clock, which causes the cuckoo to pop out with a smaller key in its beak, which has to be knocked out using a stone.

Web Original

• In this youtube video, a bird lives in a birdhouse that is Bigger on the Inside, featuring an entire apartment with, among other things, a cuckoo clock that, instead of a cuckoo, has a human saying "hello" to announce the hour.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs:
  • The short "No Time for Love" is about a cuckoo bird who tries to woo a canary in a nearby cage, which is hard for him to do because he's attached to his base, always has to go back into his clock after the bell tolls, and has to wait a whole hour to come out again.
  • Zigzagged in the episode "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock". While Slappy's titular cuckoo clock is for the most part relevant to the plot of the episode, there are a few gags associated with it, such as it going off the second time to signify that Slappy has lost her marbles from watching too many talk shows and the clock falling on one of the rest home's patients' heads, making the bird pop out of their mouth.
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: In "The Cuckoo Patrol," the Vulture Squadron is disguised as birds so they can sneak up on Yankee Doodle Pigeon more subtlely. They crash out their planes (as usual) and wind up at a cottage where a rather wacky clock maker has constructed a giant cuckoo clock. He just needs a giant cuckoo to go in it. When Dick Dastardly can't get his costume off, the clock maker uses him as the clock's cuckoo. Klunk eventually turns the clock into a flying machine. When the mission fails, the General calls:
  Dastardly: Hello? Vulture Squadron? You must have the wrong number. This is the Cuckoo Squadron...see? (holds receiver to the other pilots)
  Muttley, Klunk and Zilly: Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
• Classic Disney Shorts: In Der Fuehrer's Face, Donald Duck has a "Nutziland" cuckoo clock with a bird resembling Adolf Hitler doing the Nazi salute. The duck throws a boot at it in response.
• In Crazy Mixed-Up Pup, characters keep doing a Wild Take that includes a cuckoo popping out of the top of their head.
• Flip the Frog: The short The Cuckoo Murder Case revolves around detective Flip trying to find out who shot a bird that lived in a cuckoo clock.
• In the Futurama episode "30% Iron Chef", Zoidberg's failed attempts to discreetly glue together a bottle he wasn't supposed to touch—but accidentally broke—result in him gluing various objects to his body. He tries covering them with a trench coat, but even this flimsy attempt at appearing innocent is blown when a cuckoo clock attached to his back begins pecking at his neck. Luckily, nobody cares about anything Zoidberg does.
• In the Golden Book Video adaptation of The Elves and the Cobbler, the shoemaker owns a goofy cuckoo clock that serves as a running gag through the story, annoying the shoemaker and his wife at times.
  "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! It's twelve o'clock! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! It's midnight, everyone! Wake up and go to sleep! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
• Gravity Falls:
  • Discussed in "Tourist Trapped". Soos advises Dipper to get evidence of his suspicions that Norman is a zombie, "Otherwise people are going to think you're a major-league cuckoo clock".
  • In one of the Fixin' It with Soos shorts, Stan is so annoyed by a cuckoo clock that he smashes it with a baseball bat.
    Soos: Stan knocked it down the other day by accident.
    Stan: STOP MAKING THAT NOISE! (smash) I HATE YOU! (smash) THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT AN ACCIDENT! (smash)
• Gumby owns a wacky cuckoo clock in the 1980s Revival series, used as an alarm clock to wake him up on school mornings. But sometimes Gumby finds the cuckoo so annoying, he tapes its doors shut with a bandage.
  "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Seven o'clock! Seven o'clock! Rise and shine, make your bed, take a shower, brush your teeth, do-dee-do, cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
• Looney Tunes:
  • In 1932 short It's Got Me Again!, a cat has come down a chimney to get at the mice inside a house. The cat is temporarily startled when a cuckoo bursts out of a cuckoo clock and shouts "Cuckoo!". Then the cat rallies, and eats the bird.
  • In 1936 short The Cat Came Back, a kitten is being carried away down a sewer drain. The kitten climbs up onto a floating cuckoo clock. Twice, a cuckoo comes popping out, and the kitten swats the cuckoo away. Then the third time the cuckoo springs out more forcefully and pecks the unfortunate kitten on the head.
  • The 1938 short Have You Got Any Castles? opens with a cuckoo clock coming out and signaling the time for the book denizens to come out and play. In the end, the bird comes out again to signal the time to go, but its beak has been wrapped shut so Rip Van Winkle can finally get some sleep.
  • In the 1938 short A Feud There Was, a clan of hillbillies have a rustic cuckoo clock in their bedroom. After the bird comments on their hurricane-strength snoring, he wakes them all up by popping open a jug of moonshine.
  • In the 1945 short Holiday for Shoestrings, a bunch of tiny elves come out of hiding to help an old shoemaker. One elf emerges from a cuckoo clock, and the bird inside is seen Bound and Gagged.
  • The 1946 short Book Revue, being a parody of Have You Got Any Castles, has a similar beginning, only the bird is now stone-cold plastered while shouting "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! It's twelve o'clock!"
  • In the 1949 short Holiday for Drumsticks, it's Thanksgiving Day at the home of a hillbilly couple. At two o'clock, a cuckoo comes out of the hillbillies' clock. Instead of cuckooing, though, it uses a triangle as a dinner bell.
  • In "Porky's Hotel," a cuckoo walks out of his clock and reads from a sheet of paper:
  As my father once said...quote...(full volume) CUCKOO!!! (enters clock, pokes back out) Unquote.
  • In "The Impatient Patient," a cuckoo in a Napoleon hat comes out of a clock and simply says "Shhhhhh!" to Daffy Duck whose hiccups while hiding in a suit of armor made a ruckus. The cuckoo appears at the end with a sign that says "He doo'd it" after Daffy (off-screen) settles a score with his antagonist.
  • Porky Pig brings in a cat to rid his house of some mice in "Trap Happy Porky." The cat constructs a Rube Goldberg Device to catch the mice which culminates in a cuckoo clock cuckoo pushing a bowling ball into a funnel which clobbers each mouse.
• Lucas the Spider: In one video, Lucas sees a cuckoo clock but thinks the bird is real, so he wonders why she isn't answering his questions.
• The Mighty Heroes: One of these five is Cuckoo Man. His alternate identity for civilian life is a shopkeeper selling pet birds. He changes into his Cuckoo Man outfit by leaping into a cuckoo clock on a wall. Somehow, this tiny Hammerspace can accommodate him, and is intact after he exits the thing. His only superpower is flight, and he's usually The Chew Toy of the group.
• Minnie's Bow-Toons: Cuckoo-Loca is a mechanical bird who lives inside the clock at Minnie's Bow-tique. She went on to appear on Mickey and the Roadster Racers as a Handy Helper along with Minnie and Daisy.
• My Little Pony Tales: In Bon Bon's Diary, Patch uses a pea shooter to knock the cuckoo out of the school’s clock.
• The Pink Panther: The cartoon "In the Pink of the Night" has the titular character purchasing a special cuckoo clock guaranteed to wake the user up in the morning. As such, the bird equipped with the clock not only makes cuckoo sounds but also does stunts like clanging cymbals and blaring trumpets.
• Popeye: In How Green is My Spinach, the opening montage of Popeye beating Bluto with his spinach includes a scene of him punching Bluto into a wall and making a cuckoo clock fall on his head. The doors open to reveal his face, and his tongue pokes out to reveal the bird.
• The Sandman (1991): In keeping with the dark, Gothic Horror vibe of the short, the cuckoo that pops out of the clock is actually not a cuckoo, but a robed figure with a skull face, resembling the Grim Reaper, who rings a creepy tolling bell.
• Screen Songs: In I'm Afraid to Come Home in the Dark, a large clocktower has a cuckoo bird emerge when the clock strikes 3:00 in the morning. The bird gets caught in the door before it backs all the way in, and it then reemerges with a bandage on its neck.
• Secret Squirrel: The short "Cuckoo Clock Cuckoo" has a giant stealing the face of London's Big Ben for his cuckoo clock, leading Secret and Morocco to climb up the beanstalk to get it back. At the end, Secret makes a deal with the giant in which he gives back the clock in exchange for Morocco working as the "cuckoo" in his wristwatch.
  Morocco: Secret Squirrel better get me out of this soon before I go... Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
• An animation on Sesame Street has a man explaining what a cuckoo clock is and how it will strike the fast-approaching hour of 3:00. At that moment, 3 birds with tough-sounding New York accents hastily push by and climb a ladder up to the clock to perform their duty. When the clock strikes, each of the 3 cuckoo sounds has a different voice and inflection since they are, after all, different birds. The birds then climb down afterwards, with one of them telling the announcer "See you in an hour."
• Silly Symphonies: The 1931 short The Clock Store, being set in a clock store, naturally has a few gags involving cuckoo clocks.
• The Simpsons:
  • The Couch Gag for "Dangerous Curves" is the Simpsons family, custom-carved, coming out of custom-made cuckoo clocks based on them.
  • In "Mommie Beerest", Homer worries when Marge becomes Moe's business partner and they plan to attend a tavern owners' convention in Aruba. When the cuckoo clock in his bedroom goes off, he imagines the bird morphing into Moe repeating "Cuckold! Cuckold!". Homer doesn't know what the word means, though.
• South Park: In the episode "Starvin' Marvin", when Mayor McDaniels isn't taking Dr. Mephesto seriously about the pissed-off turkeys, she pulls out a cuckoo clock behind her chair while her aides snicker.
• Tex Avery MGM Cartoons:
  • In Who Killed Who??, the victim receives a note that he will die at midnight. When the clock chimes midnight, a skeletal bird emerges and says "At the sound of the gun, it will be exactly 12:00."
  • The short The Cuckoo Clock is about a cat who is driven mad by the incessant cuckooing of a screwy bird and tries to destroy it.
• Timmy Time: The school that Timmy goes to has a cuckoo clock, with the cuckoo doing something different depending on what time it is (e.g. holding cymbals when it's time to have a music session or holding a paintbrush and a palette when it's time for an art session).
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Gogo Dodo frequently emerges from the clocks at Acme Looniversity, and he often gives one-liners as he does this. Here are a few examples:
  "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! If you're late for class, yooooou're Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
  "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! It's lunchtime! And if you eat the meatloaf, yooooou're Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
  "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! If you don't do your homework, yooooou're Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
  "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! My agent told me if I took this role, I was cuckoo."
• Tom and Jerry:
  • In Jerry's Cousin, Muscles Mouse punches Tom across the room and into a cuckoo clock on the wall. This leaves Tom with the roof on his head, and he sticks his tongue in and out to reveal the bird.
  • In Designs on Jerry, Tom uses a cuckoo clock as part of his "modern mousetrap". A knife is attached to the bird so it can cut an overhead rope carrying a safe and have it fall on Jerry.
  • In Switchin' Kitten, Tom roams halls of a mad scientist's castle and sees various animals that have had their minds swapped. Even the cuckoo clock has a bird that goes "Moo!".
  • In A-Tom-inable Snowman, Jerry hides inside a cuckoo clock, and Tom winds the clock to the top of the hour so he can emerge and make cuckoo sounds. Tom does this a few times to taunt Jerry before devouring him, but when he finally goes for him, Jerry is gone and replaced with a stick of dynamite.
• Wunschpunsch: The wizard's lab has a cuckoo clock for counting down the 7 hours a spell needs to last in order to become permanent. The hours are announced by a hammer slamming down on a toe, causing the clock to yell in pain with each slam.

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Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

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