Fun with Homophones

Alexander: Could they be the miners?
Fred: Oh, sure. They're, like, three years old.
Alexander: Miners, not minors!
Fred: You lost me.

— Galaxy Quest

A homophone is a word or phrase that sounds like, or very similar, to something different when spoken. (Technically, only ones that sound exactly alike are homophones, but Tropes Are Flexible.) It is a case of Double Meaning, but even easier to miss, especially when read and not heard.

Naturally, this can be mined for laughs. The result is a type of Pun, but one that relies on sound instead of written language. But homophones can be used for many purposes and thus overlap with various other tropes:

• Multiple Reference Pun: A character makes a pun based on a homophone in-story. Often a Stealth Insult, sometimes just a plain insult.
• Double Entendre: A phrase has a "dirty" double sense. A good method for Getting Crap Past the Radar. If a Double Entendre is unintended by the speaker, it's an Innocent Innuendo, an Accidental Innuendo or That Came Out Wrong.
• One-Letter Pun: A alphabet-related Pun is created from a language being lazy.
• Meaningful Name: A character's name has a phonetical double-meaning, especially one that describes the character or their role.
• Punny Name: Like the above, but funnier.
• A line of dialogue has a double meaning, unintended by the speaker, that reveals more of their character or motives than they intended.
• A word or line of dialogue is comically misunderstood by a character, from which ensues hilarity. Who's on First? is a veteran example of this. Subtrope of Mondegreen Gag.

Also very frequently found in the context of prank phone calls, where the full name is a homophone for a dirty phrase.

Japanese works love this kind of wordplay, since one certain reading (furigana) can refer to many things at once. Contrast Alternate Character Reading where gags are made with a set of kanji with multiple readings.

Compare Fun with Acronyms and Fun with Palindromes. Also see Heh Heh, You Said "X" and Acronyms Are Easy as Aybeecee.

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Examples:

• Real Life

Advertising

• A GEICO commercial involves a couple who loves their new home, except for the fact that it has "aunts."
• In one A Very Muppet Portal Campaign spot, the Swedish Chef is teaching Beaker a soup recipe and tells him to add pepper, which he pronounces "pepe". Beaker pulls out Pepe the King Prawn.

Anime & Manga

• Azumanga Daioh:
  • The girls at one point make jokes about Bruce Lee acting in a hypothetical movie called "Blue Three" (both are pronounced "Buruu Surii" in Japanese).
  • In the English dub, Mr. Kimura drops the Yule/you'll pun on Yukari.
• Chainsaw Man:
  • In the anime version of the drinking party, Denji sees kisu (a type of fish meat) on the restaurant menu and remembers that beating the Eternity Devil means Himeno owes him a kiss (the English word in Japanese being pronounced "kisu").
  • When Denji's at the aquarium, he keeps wanting to see the penguins up until the Famine Devil shows up. In Japanese, the word for penguin he uses is "kiga (企鵝)", which is pronounced the same as the "famine (飢餓)" part of the devil's name.
• Eien no With: Hitomi raises a puppy to be a seeing guide dog who she named Eye, which is actually an elaborate bilingual pun: Eye is a Labrador, "lab" is pronounced "rabu" in Japanese; "rabu" is how the English word "love" is pronounced; "love" in Japanese is "ai" which sounds like "eye"; "Hitomi" also means "eye". Shy Hitomi feels a connection with Eye, the runt of the litter so there's another layer: "mi" means eye, "mi" sounds like "me" ("he reminds me of me").
• The first season of I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying ends on a pun. Both Kaoru and Hajime say sankyu, although one of them meant "thank you" and the other meant "maternity leave".
• Doraemon has a few episodes where a gadget is based on this trope:
  • One gadget can turn an object into another object whose name is a homophone, for example turning a spider into a cloud which in Japanese share the same pronunciation くも kumo.
  • Another episode has a gadget that can conjure something out of scratch, with a catch: it is notoriously bad at interpreting homophones. When Suneo plays a prank to make it rain in Nobita's room, it causes candies to rain instead. (Both "rain" and "candy" are called ame in Japanese.)
  • Once, Nobita asked if alcohol can reproduce, which Doraemon says yes. Unfortunately, Doraemon was talking about salmon, which also happened to be pronounced sake in Japanese. Presumably why Japanese borrowed the word "salmon". Hilariously though, Doraemon then proceeds to reproduce alcohol like how salmon reproduce.
• The Kindaichi Case Files relies on this as a clue to solve a series of murder in a mansion linked to a deceased musician's poem. During the second murder, the culprit mistakenly put a spinning top instead of something related to horse like chess piece, due to them sounding similar pronunciation wise (koma). Kindaichi then deduced that the culprit was one of those who came late to the mansion thus not knowing how the poem was written in kanji.
• In My Hero Academia, the author is known for his various name puns. A couple that fall into this trope:
  • Present Mic aka Hizashi Yamada is a fun-loving, energetic, always loud character. His first name is pronounced exactly like the Japanese word for sunshine.
  • Sero Hanta has one if you realize “Sero” is a Japanese Ranguage version of “/cello” as in “Cellophane” or “Sellotape” referring to his tape quirk.
  • Aizawa Shouta borderlines it, the first half of his last name is said just like “eye” as in what body part his quirk lies in.
• Ranma ½: Early on, when Genma (in panda form) is handed a loaf of bread, Dr. Tofu makes a dumb joke regarding the fact that "panda" and "pan da" ("It/That is bread") are homophones in Japanese. The English translation had to rewrite the joke to being "the breadwinner".
• Many names and speeches in One Piece are playing with homophones, reflecting Oda's love of such gags. Case in point, many of Zoro's sword techniques are badass sounding names that happen to be homophonic with something silly or unrelated, such as how "Tatsumaki" is written with the kanji for "Dragon Wave", but it can also mean "Tornado".
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Manjoume got his nickname "Manjoume Thunder" because it sounds like his catchphrase "Manjoume-san da!" (basically "That's Mister Manjoume!").
• Ayakashi Triangle:
  • The spell that turned Matsuri female is written "性・醒・流・転". The punctuation indicates each kanji is a separate word, thus it's pronounced "Sei Sei Ru Ten (Sex Awakening Exile Alteration)". This sounds nearly the same as "Seisei Ruten (生々流転)", a phrase for the flow of souls in a cycle of reincarnation, playing on how Matsuri assumes a new identity as a girl.
  • Before her Important Haircut, Suzu considered her hair's length a sign of spiritual power, saying "Hair (kami) leads to the gods (kami)."

Comic Books

• The Adventure Time comic introduced a character named Desert Princess, who rules over a desert, whose body is made of various Candy Kingdom citizens' bodies all mashed together, specifically ones who were desserts. She can sculpt sand into sweets, or rather make desserts out of the desert (though they'll still taste like sand to anyone else but her).

Comic Strips

• In one What's New? with Phil and Dixie after Dixie's Face–Heel Turn, she sold Phil's soul to a demon for magical powers. The demon promptly cackled "Your Soul Is Mine!" while tearing the bottom off Phil's shoe. Phil notes that he's grateful that demons are bad at spelling.

Currency

• The Toonie—-the Canadian 2-dollar coin—-is sometimes jokingly called the "Moonie", as it depicts the monarch "with a bear behind".

Fan Works

• Dragonball Z Abridged uses this in one of the Episode Breakdowns. Bulma's just asked if Mr. Gohan would like to stay for dinner:
  Gohan: Mr. Gohan would.

The episode commentary reveals they had made an (ultimately-scrapped) alternate scene where Gohan takes Bulma up on her offer to stay the night, interested as she is in his, uh...

Gohan: Mr. Gohan wood.

• The First Saniwa sequel: Shuten-dōji calls Onigiri (Higekiri in Onigiri's body) Yorimitsu's wakashū. Higekiri thinks he's calling him a poetry collection (和歌集) rather than a good-looking receptive partner in a male-male relationship (若衆).
• Pokémon × Nimja: Play the Game: "Squirrels are cannibals. They eat acorns." ^ExplanationSquirrel in Dutch is "eekhoorn," which is pronounced almost identically to "acorn," a.k.a. those little nuts squirrels eat. And by the way, it's truth in television.
• In "Operation Bear Hunt" of The AFR Universe, Hanami hears her aunt Futaba comment about her mother Makoto destroying someone "with her bare hands". Hanami doesn't know the expression and thinks Futaba said her mother has "bear hands". She's confused at first but then sees someone in a tv show shapeshift their hand into an actual bear. Seeing this, Hanami thinks Makoto's hands can turn into bears too and goes about trying to get the transformation to happen.
• In the Facing the Future Series, while fighting a ghost bee, Sam cries out "Honey!". Danny think she's calling him a pet name, but it turns out she was trying to warn him of the bee's incoming projectile.

Films — Animation

• Megamind names his protege "Titan" while handing him a set of tights. It's not until he writes his own super-name (across the city, in 20-meter-long letters of flaming destruction) that the viewers learn he thought his new name was Tighten.
• Flushed Away has a phonetic pun across two different speakers:
  Roddie St. James: What the ...
  Sid the Sewer Rat: Hello!
• In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, when Wallace and Gromit's Bun-Vac accidentally sucks up Victor's hairpiece, it leads to a funny exchange between him and Wallace:
  Victor: I want... toupee, please.
  Wallace: Oh, grand! We take check or cash.
  Victor: Toupee, you idiot! My hair is in your machine!
  Wallace: Oh, no, it's only rabbits in there. The hare, I think you'll find, is a much larger mammal.
• In Cars 2, when Mater was cornered by the Lemons, we have this exchange:
  Mater: Dadgum!
  Mater's Computer: Gatling Gun. Request acknowledge.
  [Mater's Gatling gun is deployed]
  Mater: Shoot, I didn't mean...!
  Mater's Computer: Request acknowledged. Firing.
  [Mater's guns fire, pinning the Lemons down]
  Mater: Wait, Wait! I didn't mean that kind of "shoot"!
  Mater's Computer: Correction acknowledged. Deploying chute.
  [Mater's parachute pops out and he goes flying]
• All Dogs Go to Heaven 2: Carface Carruthers makes a Deal with the Devil with the demon Red. Red straight up tells him he'll have to pay with his soul, but Carface thinks he said sole and agrees, thinking he's outsmarting Red because he doesn't wear shoes. At the end of the film, Red clarifies the mistake, collects on his bargain, and Carface is Dragged Off to Hell.
• Turning Red: The background music for one of the official trailers is *NSYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me", which can be misheard as "It's gonna be Mei" (i.e. the main character). Pretty much invoked with a line edited from "You might been hurt, babe" to "You might been hurt, Mei".
• In the climax of Chicken Run, when the chickens rebel and attack Mr. Tweady, he calls out to his wife and we get this exchange.
  Mr. Tweady: Mrs. Tweady! The chickens are revolting!
  Mrs. Tweady: (Her back turned and not even looking) Finally, something we agree on.

Films — Live-Action

• My Favorite Year: Alan Swann (played by Peter O'Toole) advised Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) on his romantic pursuit of K.C. Downing (Jessica Harper). Swann restrained Stone from pursuing Downing just long enough to advise "Always let her think she is being chaste/chased."
• Moneypenny [Samantha Bond]'s "You always were a cunning linguist (cunnilinguist), James" to James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies.
• In Marx Brothers films, Groucho Marx uses phonetic puns and double-entendres as one of his signature traits:
  • A Night at the Opera. When Groucho is told a certain singer is paid a thousand dollars a night, Groucho responds, "A thousand dollars a nacht?!" If you speak German, like Groucho did, you'll hear "a nacht" (a night). If you don't speak German you'll hear "an act". Both make the same amount of sense. Making this a bi-lingual Meaningful Homophone.
• In Galaxy Quest, the similar-sounding words "minor" and "miner" lead to a confusion:
  Alex: Could they be the miners?
  Fred: Sure, they're like, three years old.
  Alex: Miners, not minors!
  • Through Incidental Multilingual Wordplay, it also works in the French version, where the two words ("mineur") are identical.
• In Captain Ron, Martin decides to take a walk on an island - Ron warns him to stay on a marked path and look out for gorillas, but Martin scoffs that gorillas aren't native to the area, and strays from the path to prove his point... Only to be ambushed by a rag-tag group of armed men in camouflage - Guerillas. Martin blames Ron for the confusion, claiming he enunciated poorly on purpose:
  Martin: He said "gorillas", not "guerrillas!" Guer, Go! Huge difference, kids!
• The Action Prologue of Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans ends with this one-liner by The Dragon, providing what one of the most on-the-nose Title Drops in movie history:
  Sultana: I'll have my revenge, and Deathstalker too! [cue title sequence]
• A serious example occurs in The Dry. When Aaron is returning Karen's library books, he discovers a newspaper article about himself—with his phone number written at the top—shoved in one of the books. Along with the article, he finds the borrowing receipt from the library with the word "GRANT?" written on the back. Aaron assumes that this refers to Grant Dow and that Karen had been suspecting him of something a week before she was murdered. It is only later when he sees some paperwork from the school that he realises that "GRANT" refers to an educational grant and Karen suspected that Scott was embezzling money that should have been going to the school.
• George of the Jungle uses a sound-alike for a gag:
  Narrator: And they responded with awe.
  Cast: [adoringly] Awwwww...
  Narrator: I said "awe". A-W-E.
  Cast: [impressed] Oooooh...
  Narrator: That's better.
• In Spy Hard, two thugs are harassing a Macaulay Culkin expy:
  Thug 1: This is for Getting Even with Dad!
  Thug 2: And this is for My Girl!
  Thug 1: And this is for My Girl, too!
  Kevin: I wasn't even in My Girl 2!
  Thugs: (look to each other, then...) WE DON'T CARE!

Jokes

• A joke: Why will you never go hungry in the desert? Because of all the sandwiches (= "sand which is") there!
• A lot of Stirlitz jokes, from Russian Humour, are based on this. It's often difficult to translate them.
• The joke name for a law firm: "Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe".
• The joke name for a divorce firm: "Ditcher, Quicke and Hyde"
• The joke name for a funeral home: "Amigone Funeral Home".
• Q: Why is Six afraid of Seven? A: Because Seven ate Nine.^ExplanationSix, Seven, Eight, Nine, = 6, 7, 8, 9. "Eight" is pronounced like "Ate".
• Q: Two cats have a swimming race: One cat is from England and is named One-Two-Three. The other is from France and is named Un-Deux-Trois. Who won? A: One-Two-Three wins, of course. Because the Un-Deux-Trois cat sank.^ExplanationUn, deux, trois, quatre, cinq = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in French. "Quatre" and "cinq" are pronounced like "cat" and "sank".
• A proof that horses have infinite legs: How many legs does a horse have? Two hindlegs plus forelegs. Two plus four is six. Six is an even number, but it is also an odd number of legs for a horse. The only number which is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, a horse has infinite legs.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: In Cappuccino Years, Adrian tells a woman how to get to Torquay.^note A town on the south coast of England, and the setting of Fawlty Towers It is then reported on the news that a woman was wandering around Torquay in a state of distress, having wanted to go to the similar-sounding Turkey.
• In his autobiography Boy, Roald Dahl describes an imaginary scene to show how the headmaster subtly censored the boys' letters home, by pointing out their mistakes, but never allowing them to correct it in the letter.
  Headmaster: (Seeing "Tuesday knight" written) Don't you know how to spell "night"?
  Boy: Yes sir, k-n-i-g-h-t.
  Headmaster: That's the other kind of knight, you idiot!
  Boy: Which kind, sir? I don't understand.
  Headmaster: The one in shining armour! The man on horseback! How do you spell Tuesday night?
  Boy: I'm not sure, sir.
  Headmaster: It's n-i-g-h-t. Stay in and write it out fifty times this afternoon. No, no! Don't change it in the letter! You don't want to make it any messier than it already is! It must go as you wrote it!
• Halfway through Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery, Chester reads that vampires can be slain by jabbing them with a stake...and tries to use the steak the Monroe family was going to have for dinner to defeat Bunnicula.
• In Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Missy, seeing Pongo covered in soot, declares "Suit soots you!"
• Discworld:
  • In Reaper Man, the wizards try to cure Windle Poons of his sudden undead nature by burying him at a crossroads with a stake through his heart. The wizards get a bit confused and think they have to bury him with a steak through his heart. Then the Bursar sheepishly admits he couldn't find any steak on such short notice and brought a bundle of slightly wilted celery instead.
  • Invoked and lampshaded in Feet of Clay: When Dragon King of Arms (an ancient vampire) tells Vimes "Pray, enter", Vimes (who hates vampires) thinks to himself that he hears it as "Prey, enter." Quite fittingly, since the old bloodsucker is obsessed with puns.
  • Reacher Gilt makes a prophet/profit joke in Going Postal which goes over the head of the other Corrupt Corporate Executives. Lampshaded when he notes it'd be clearer in writing.
  • The below joke also appears in The Discworld Companion which describes Nanny Ogg's early years as "always chaste, often caught".
  • There are a couple of occasions when characters confuse the expression "Olé!" (Spanish cheer) with "au lait" (French for "with milk").
  • Night Watch Discworld: From the first few pages, "gilt by association" is a pun on "guilt by association", since it's talking about golden, a.k.a gilt, armor, that makes Vimes feel like a "class traitor", a.k.a guilty.
• Gunpowder God in the Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen series. A commander visits his wounded troops in the hospital and comments on the attractiveness of their nurse. "She has been most marvelously chaste," replies one of the men mischievously. "Of course she has [been chased]," roars the commander, "but has she been caught?"
• I Hate Dragons: Somehow, Skip can hear the difference:
  • Master Johnston is perplexed:
    Master Johnston: Don't get so uppity! Double? What, you think I'm maid of coins?
    Skip: The word is 'made', sir.
    Master Johnston: Huh? That's what I said. How—
  • Next instance, with a dragon:
    "Oh, come now. It won't be so bad as you think. They're will be hardly any pain at all."
    "I don't care if there's pain or not. I'll still be dead. And you used the wrong version of 'they're'. You wanted 'there' instead."
    "I did? How can you tell? They'res no difference in the sounds they make."
    "Actually, I can hear apostrophes."
    "What, really?"
    "Yes. I can hear spelling too, actually."
• Matilda: When testing Nigel on his spelling, Miss Trunchbull hopes to catch him out with a homophonic word; but Nigel is too smart for her.
  Miss Trunchbull: Spell "write".
  Nigel: Which one? The one you do with a pen, or the one which means the opposite of wrong?
  Miss Trunchbull: The one with the pen, you little fool!
  (Nigel spells it correctly)
• In one Ramona Quimby novel where, on her first day in class, Ramona caused a minor ruckus because when the teacher said "you can sit here for the present", Ramona didn't realize the teacher was meaning "the present time" instead of "a gift".
• Hiro is the hero of Snow Crash. Very deliberate, as he chose the name 'Hiro Protagonist', and his actual birth name is never revealed.
• Piers Anthony's Xanth series is fond of this trope:
  • "Isle of View" being confused with "I love you."
  • The title of Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn is ambiguous on four counts:
    • Crewel is a form of embroidery using wool, and a homophone for "cruel".
    • Lye is a caustic (i.e. chemically active creating burns) liquid, and a homophone for "lie".
    • Caustic can be caustic chemical, or just an adjective meaning bitter.
    • Yarn is a tale, except when it's used for knitting.
• Encyclopedia Brown:
  • "The Case of the Flower Can". A thief accidentally drops a valuable Confederate coin into a can filled with flowers. Encyclopedia knows he'll try to get it back, so he sets a trap. When a man comes to the door claiming to be selling magazines, a woman hands him a can of flour and says she put the coin in "the flour can". Instead of dumping out the flour to look for the coin, he searches until he finds the can filled with flowers, thus proving that he's the thief. Only the thief would think that she was talking about a "flower" can.
  • Another mystery has a diamond theft solved by the detective announcing the diamond is "an arrow flight away" (it was taken out of its case, attached to an arrow, and shot out the window). The guilty person was the only one who thought to look outside because he knew a bow and arrow were involved, everyone else assumed the diamond was upstairs, i.e. "a narrow flight" of stairs away.
• Riddley Walker, which is completely written in a first-person Funetik Aksent, takes advantage of the ambiguity to have double meanings all over the place. One of the main ones is "hart of the wud", which variously means "hart (deer) of the wood", "heart of the wood", and "heart of the would" (as in, the will). Usually, it means more than one of those at the same time.
• The English poet Thomas Hood used this (and identical rhymes) to extremely comical effect in his poem "Copy".
• The O. Henry short story 'Sound and Fury' is the 'fun' variety of this. An author is dictating a story to his stenographer, and her comments indicate she keeps getting it wrong. Their names are respectively Mr. Penne and Miss Lore, so they also have punny names.
  Mr. Penne: [dictates] "...Cortland, with his arm firmly entwined about her waist, knew nothing of her sighs—"
  Miss Lore: Goodness! If he couldn't tell her size with his arm around—
• The classic SF short story Placet is a Crazy Place starts with the situation getting so bad that the main character tenders his resignation by orally instructing the comms officer send two words to headquarters, "I quit." Later, through a series of miraculous contrivances, all becomes well. Except that due to the resignation message the hero will be unable to reap the rewards of his labors. The day is saved (for the final time) when it turns out that the comms officer sent the two words "Ike Witt," a person know to both HQ and the hero. Headquarters had duly transferred Ike Witt to the hero's command.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect describes going through hyperspace as "unpleasantly like being drunk"; Arthur Dent asks what's unpleasant about being drunk (as in intoxicated) and Ford responds "Ask a glass of water" (revealing that he meant it as in imbibed).
• The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams features the celebrated firm of architects, Sir Conham Goode, Son, and Howe, who designed the new buildings for Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental).
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Pasta and Penance: The Redemption of Princess Isabel #2: Noting how the homophone of "role" and "roll" aren't clear when spoken aloud:
  "There's a difference between role-playing and roll-playing," he pointed out to Natalie once he'd managed to swallow.
  "...you just literally said the same thing twice."
  "It's more obvious in print," he assured her.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • "The Last Trump": The angel (who is made of Pure Energy) Etheriel's name sounds like ethereal, which means "extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world".
  • "The Watery Place": The words Venice and Venus sound similar, causing Sheriff Cameron to confuse the 'foreigners' for people from Italy.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The infamous "Rains of Castamere" was named after an incident in which Tywin Lannister exterminated House Reyne of Castamere by drowning them with water diverted from a river.
• Dave Eggers founded a magazine he called Might for its double meaning suggesting strength and possibility (as in "might happen"). In his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he notes that when he mentioned the magazine in conversation, people tended to ask him if it was spelled "Mite", as in the arachnid.
• The central pun of Thomas More's Utopia is that "Utopia", transliterated from Greek, means "no place", but is pronounced just like "Eutopia", meaning "good place", which is what the former has since come to mean.

Live-Action TV

• The Benny Hill Show:
  • A doctor comes on a serious TV talk show to discuss euthanasia. Unfortunately, the talk show's topic of the day was "Youth in Asia".
  • Two army officers are sitting around smoking pipes and reading the paper. One calls for his batman ^note "a soldier assigned to an officer as a servant", and an actor obviously confused about his part comes in dressed as Batman. At this point it's revealed that what we're watching is the production of a film.
• Blackadder:
  • In "Witchsmeller Pursuivant", a horse is being questioned on the witness stand in Black Adder's trial for being a witch. Upon answering with a neighing sound, the prosecutor asks for clarification, "Was that a 'neigh' or a 'nay'?" (The subtitles spell this out.)
  • The title of the fourth series: Blackadder Goes Forth.
  • In "Captain Cook" of Blackadder Goes Forth, Baldrick believes his father was a nun.
    Baldrick: The funny thing is, my father was a nun.
    Blackadder: [with great authority] No, he wasn't.
    Baldrick: [with equal authority] He was so, sir, because whenever he was up in court, and the judge used to say "occupation?", he'd say "nun".
  • In "General Hospital" of Blackadder Goes Forth, George mistakes Mr. Smith's "nein" (German for "no") for "nine".
    George: Have you seen any spies in the hospital?
    Mr. Smith: Nein.
    George: Nine?! The Captain's got his work cut out, then.
• Fargo: Season Two: Mike Milligan reminisces in one episode about how the word "revolution" has two meanings: either as an overthrow of another power, or a planet making a complete orbit around another celestial object. He fails to realize the irony of his storyline: he thinks his revolution against the Gerhardts is the "overthrow" kind, when in reality it's the "full-circle" kind. His success against them just leave him back where he started: as an underappreciated employee for the Kansas City Mafia that's stuck doing a job he hates.
• Fawlty Towers: A passing example in "Waldorf Salad", concerning Mrs Arrad's plaice. Polly also quips that she will have plaice re-placed.
  Mrs Arrad: Excuse me! There is sugar in the salt cellar.
  Basil: Anything else?
  Mrs Arrad: I've put it all over the plaice.
  Basil: All over the place? What were you doing with it?
  Mrs Arrad: All over the plaice.
• Game of Thrones: House Lannister's song and go-to implied threat, "The Rains of Castamere", is about the destruction of House Reyne of Castamere.
• The Good Place:
  • Jason has a special room in his house where he can be alone or hang out with his buddies without being disturbed. Everyone's noticeably thrown when he calls it his "bud hole".
    "Would you like to see my bud hole?"
  • While staying in Sydney, socialite Tahani mentions she got a house through Airbnb. The rest of the Brainy Bunch is shocked when they visit it and discovers it's a lavish mansion. Tahani quickly clarifies that she meant Heirbnb, where heirs and heiresses can trade off mansions, yachts, blimp hangars, that sort of thing.
• In Home Improvement, Tim's son is talking to him via videotape, and claims "There is greatness in my genes/jeans."
• Janda Kembang: Episode 16 twice makes a joke based on Indonesian word for insect (serangga) sounding similar with "si Rangga", the name of a missing child.
• Kaamelott:
  • A bit of fun is to expect every time the Huns are discussed (since in French, it sounds like "un", i.e. "a/an" or "one").
  • Angles are another barbarian tribe trying to invade Britannia... not the angles of the map. Surprisingly, Perceval is the one to point this out... which leads Arthur to point out that yes, they are, but in this case they aren't.
  • A conversation with Karadoc goes in circles after it turns out he gets confused by the use of rams and scorpions on the battlefield.
  • Degrees, being used for both angles and temperatures, also confuse Perceval.
  • Averted, however, with the Moors (which in French is "Maures", sounding like "Morts" i.e. dead people). Arthur expects Perceval to be confused about the term, but he actually knows it refers to North-African people.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has fun with this in the episode "Sugar", when the detectives are looking for a witness to a murder known online as the "Master Baiter", who works in a store.
  Stabler: [over the store PA] Attention employees, will the Master Baiter please report to Register 1. Master Baiter, Register 1.
  [a nerdy-looking stock boy hangs his head in shame and walks forlornly to the front]
  Benson: [over the store PA] Not a "masturbator", the Master Baiter.
• In an episode of Lois & Clark, Tempus, who became the President, addresses Superman on television and states:
  Tempus: I hope we can find a place for you in the Doe administration... I hope you can understand that... and if you, Kent... I mean can't...
• NCIS:
  • A mild example bordering on Who's on First? between Palmer and Ducky. Palmer explains that he doesn't like sand, after playing in it as a child and itching excessively afterwards.
    Ducky: Well, it wasn't the sand, Mr. Palmer, but the sand mite.
    Palmer: Sand might what?
    Ducky: The sand mite bit you.
    Palmer: Sand bites?
    Ducky: Well, sand mites might bite.
    Palmer: I'm grammatically lost.
  • Another episode features Tony being (deliberately for once) irritating. He refers to the agency's "new director" and then clarifies that he didn't say "nude erector", helpfully explaining that's called a homophone.
• The Red Green Show:
  • The Lodge makes a 50-foot long of sausage link for a cook-off, and are trying to figure out how to actually get it there.
    Red: I got an idea! Take a couple of boat trailers, put 'em end-to-end behind the Possum Van, and just lay the sausage right over the whole deal there.
    Dalton: But what if the cops stop us?
    Red: Well, we'll tell 'em it's a biodegradable telephone pole.
    Dalton: Oh! Oh! Y'know what you could say?
    Red: What?
    Dalton: [laughing] "I bet you never sausage^note saw such a thing!"
    Red: ...Don't make me kill you, Dalton.
  • Happens at least Once per Episode. During the "Possum Lodge Word Game" segments, Red has to get a rotating character to say a word, and fails to get them to give the correct response to the word in question. He normally wins when the character says a homophone of the word in the answer to the final question. Red's final question is just as likely to have been asked to prompt the player to say the homophone as it is to get a wrong response but contain the homophone in it.
• The Sooty Show: In "Hair Today", Matthew and Sweep have to get a hair from a completely bald man in order to cure their current state of baldness. Meeting Duncan Goodhew, they explain their plight, and he gives them a hare (as in a toy which vaguely resembles Bugs Bunny).
• On the Monday midnight edition of ESPN's SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt, the "Bad Beats" segment (where SVP and his broadcast partner "Stanford Steve" Coughlin watch games that narrowly cause them to lose the spread they bet on) opens with Steve at a restaurant that serves up nothing but poorly-prepared beets.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • In "Fair Game", the Goa'uld Yu leads to this confusion, often being referred to as "Lord Yu" (the heroes never refer to any other Goa'uld by their title) to avoid confusion. In a later episode, as newcomer Weir is being briefed:
    Dr. Weir: Yu?
    Daniel Jackson: Don't. Every joke, every pun, done to death. Seriously.
  • Then in later seasons, the main enemy is named "Ba'al" (which the characters pronounce identically to the word "ball"). After he clones himself repeatedly, they have to go capture all the Ba'als.
    Cameron Mitchell: Chief, got a full count. Two strikes, three Ba'als.
• A clever dramatic twist in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Bread and Circuses". Kirk and crew encounter a world that resembles the Roman Empire with contemporary (1960s) technology, and also meet a group of slaves who claim to worship the Sun and preach a message of love and brotherhood. At the end of the episode, Spock admits to being puzzled by these sun-worshipers, since most sun-worshiping tribes tend to be superstitious and primitive. Uhura realizes that these "sun-worshipers" are in fact analogous to Christians. "It's not the sun up in the sky, it's the Son of God."^note Although Fridge Logic comes into play here. The planet's "if Rome never fell" hat is handwaved as an example of "Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development" — only in that case, they should presumably be speaking some kind of Latin, which makes it highly unlikely that "son" (filius) and "sun" (solis) would be homophones. If they're in fact speaking an alien language, that makes it even less likely.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Riddles", Neelix tells Tuvok a riddle about an ensign who gets stranded on an L-class planet with nothing but a calendar, yet survives for a full year. How? By eating the dates from the calendar. Tuvok dismisses this as mere wordplay, but at the end of the episode, he realizes that the ensign could have also eaten the Sundays/sundaes.
• Sze U Tonight is very fond of this trope. For instance, its Chinese name is 今晚睇李, but 李 is host Johnson Lee's surname, and is a pun on 你, the word for you.
• In one The Two Ronnies sketch (far from the only one using a concept like this), Ronnie Corbett is a lord who finds his butler, played by Barker, to be insolent. His wife disagrees. They discuss this over dinner, during which Barker manages to make every course announcement sound like an insult to the lord or a compliment to the lady.
  Barker: Your sweet, m'lady. Your nuts, m'lord.
  Corbett: Oh, for heaven's sake! How am I supposed to open these?
  Barker: [presenting a set of nutcrackers] Your crackers, m'lord.
• The What We Do in the Shadows (2019) episode "Gail" does the classic minors/miners joke, with Laszlo telling us his car was taken away from him because he was transporting miners across state lines.
• Workaholics:
  • In one episode, Adam Demamp walks into the boss' office and says "Alice, I Demamp to know what is going on!"
  • Also, while chewing tobacco (a brand of which is Skoal) Adam says 'Skoal!' instead of the guy's more usual call to depart, 'S'go!'

Music

• Rammstein's song "Du Hast". In German, "du hast" means "you have," and "du haßt" means "you hate," and they're pronounced almost identically. So the lines, "Du. Du hast. Du hast mich," are commonly heard as, "You. You hate. You hate me." (The sentence fully sung is, "Du hast mich gefragt, und ich hab nichts gesagt," meaning, "You have asked me, and I have said nothing.")
• "Funky But Chic" by David Johansen - the chorus words, run together, become "funky butt cheek."
• The Metallica songs "The Unforgiven" and "The Unforgiven II" technically have Non Appearing Titles, but both have lines that are near-homophones for Title Drops ("I dub thee unforgiven" and "Are you unforgiven, too?).
• Kids Praise: It takes them until the ninth album to do this, but they finally make a pun about Psalty tasting terrible because he's got too much salt. The context is that there are cannibals who only eat books who want to eat Psalty.
• In P.D.Q. Bach's cantata "Iphigenia in Brooklyn," the second recitative culminates in the anguished cry of Orestes (as he was being chased by the Amenities): "Oh ye gods, who knows what it is to be running? Only he who is running knows." The text of the ensuing aria merely repeats the last two words. "Running nose," get it?
• The title of the Beatles album Rubber Soul is a pun and intentionally sounds like "rubber sole".
• Liz Phair's song "And He Slayed Her" is a jab at Capitol record exec Andy Slater.
• Four Tet followed up the album Pause with a remix EP titled Paws.
• Mercury Rev's "Goddess On A Hiway" uses wordplay which hinges on "I got us" sounding like "a goddess". The first verse starts with the lines "Well, I got us on a highway, I got us in a car...", but the last verse makes a Lyric Swap to "She's a goddess on a highway, a goddess in a car..."
• The chorus to Sleigh Bells' "Locust Laced" is "I feel like dynamite / I feel like dying tonight" - the way Alexis Krauss sings it, the lyrics are easily mistaken for just "I feel like dynamite" repeated twice.
• Slade's "Merry Xmas Everyone" has a verse about having a sledding accident that sets up a pun about being "slayed", which can also be heard as "sleighed" or as a Singer Name Drop for the band themselves. It's also a callback to the title of their album Slayed?.
• "Dance Macabre" by Ghost has the refrain "just wanna be / wanna bewitch you in the moonlight" - "Bewitch you" is meant to also sound like "be with you".
• Qbomb: In "Dire Break", the singer wants a break from all the negative reception he's gotten for his hard work. The lyrics at the start say that "[I] want a dire break", but towards the end, it switches to "I'd rather die or break" (than have people replace him).
• Too Much Joy's "Crush Story" includes the pun "Misunderstand me / hey, miss, understand me".
• Wilco's "Walken" is titled as a Shout-Out to Christopher Walken, but the opening line is "I'm walkin' all by myself".
• Knox's "Love Letter" plays on the term "love letter" and the phrase "love let her".
  'Cause love let her trust in, let her believe
  Then love let her spiral into the deep end
  She's burning all the love letters he sent her
  They don't mean nothing now
  'Cause love let her, love let her, love let her down
• In the Benny Hill song "Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West", "pasteurised" is mistaken for "past your eyes".
  He said, "Do you want it pasteurised, 'cause pasteurised is best?"
  She said, "I'd be happy if it comes up to my chest."
• In Frank Black & The Catholics' "Dog Gone", the line "the news is gonna break that I am here" eventually gets a darker Lyric Swap - "Your noose is gonna break while I am there".

Podcasts

• RiffTrax's commentary on Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer:
  Surfer: The source of my power.
  Susan: Your board?
  Kevin: Yeah, so am I.
• You're Dead To Me: In the episode on the history of ice cream, comedian Richard Osman mishears (or pretends to mishear) the term "the queen of ices" as "the queen of ISIS"

Radio

• Car Talk would always sign off with a Credits Gag where the hosts would list off fake crew members whose names were a Hurricane of Puns, such as their Russian chauffeur Pikup Andropov, their makeup artist Bud Tugly, their PR manager Haywood U. Buzoff...

Theatre

• Discussed and spelled out in Elaine May's one-act play Adaptation (no relation to the film of the same name):
  Norma: Last year I read "The Prophet" aloud at my parents' seder. My mother cried. She didn't understand. I wanted them to hear "The Prophet" so they could understand love — but too many people spell it f-i-t.
  Phil: F-i-t?
  Norma: Yes, ironic, isn't it? That's how they spell everything.
  Phil: F-i-t spells "fit".
  Norma: I know. That's why "The Prophet" is meaningless to them.
  Phil: Oh, they spell Prophet f-i-t.

Phil then misses the point Norma was making, discussing illiteracy.

• In The Pirates of Penzance, the Major-General and Pirate King get very frustrated with each other, when the Major-General asks the pirates who have sworn to never molest an orphan (and word has gotten around), "Do you know what it means to be an orphan?", to which the Pirate King answers, "Often!" In proper British English, the words sound identical.
• Westeros: An American Musical: When Sansa tells Sandor he's a good knight:
  Dontos: Good night to you too!
• In the Broadway version of Disney's Aladdin, there's a Running Gag where Babkak, a friend of Aladdin's who's a Big Eater, thinks someone is talking about food when they say something that sounds vaguely similar.
  Kassim: Now I feel awful.
  Babkak: Did somebody say falafel?

Video Games

• The characters of Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- are not called jinbutsu 人物 like normal. Instead, a homophone that reads 神仏 ("deities and Buddhas") is used.
• In Portal, GlaDOS tells Chell, "When the testing is over, you will be... missed/mist." The subtitles only state "will be missed", as expected. Subtitles have difficulty properly rendering an ambiguous spoken homonym. Considering the flames at the end of the testing course, most of Chell will be mist, and pretty quickly too. In the event, Chell is fine because she used portals so that the flames missed her. So GlaDOS was literally telling the truth!
• At the beginning of Sakura Wars (1996), Ichiro Ogami receives orders to transfer to the Imperial Assault Troop, a clandestine combat unit, only to later find out that he is actually now a part of the Imperial Assault Troupe, a theater company. As it turns out, however, the Troupe is a cover for the Troop. The pun works both in English and in Japanese, as the group's Japanese name, "Teikoku Kagekidan", can be translated either as "Imperial Combat Revue" or "Imperial Opera Revue", depending on the kanji used.
• In Colossal Cave Adventure, when trying to kill the bear:
  With what? Your bare hands? Against his bear hands?
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: Conker sounds like "conquer".
• Used several times in BloodRayne with character names: Blood Rayne = "blood rain", Ferril = "feral".
• Planescape: Torment: Ravel has trouble remembering which word to use in some places, by first saying the correct word (e.g. "not"), stumbling, and replacing them with an identical sounding word ("knot"). This word choice is only presented in the game's text dialog, and wouldn't be noticed if it were simply spoken dialog.
• Uncharted has Sully, who sullies everything he comes in contact with.
• Tales of Rebirth: Solving the "Mystery of the Iron Factory" sidequest nets Annie and Veigue the "Great Detective"^note  名探偵 title, while Tytree gets "Sloppy Detective."^note 迷探偵 The words used are pronounced exactly the same, even though their meanings are entirely opposite.
• Team Fortress 2: The Soldier's woefully inaccurate knowledge about Sun Tzu includes the belief that he herded two of every kind of animal in the world onto a boat and then beat them all up with his awesome fighting skills, and that it is for this reason that whenever a bunch of different kinds of animals are gathered together in one place, it's called a "Tzu" (zoo).^note Unless it's a farm.
• Toon Link's weapon type in Hyrule Warriors is called "Light Sword". Its description says it's a lightweight sword meant for younger adventurers, and... well, just guess what its element is.
• Pokémon:
  • The move "Poison Jab" can be learned not only by Pokémon of the Poison type or who have fangs/stingers/spines to inject their poison with, but also Fighting Pokémon.^note Who "jab" with their fists.
  • The Grass/Dragon Pokémon Applin (and to a lesser extent its evolutions) is a wyrm (dragon) in an apple.
• During the 16 More Ways bonus game in 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds, one of the ways the hunters kill a vampire is by steaking it... with the steak from a steak, egg, and cheese bagel. They end up having to explain the pun to the confused vampire, who dies as soon as he understands it.
• In the Animal Crossing games, white turnips are bought on Sunday at a random cost, then can be sold to the shop within the next week for a price that fluctuates each day. Like the stock market, the goal is to buy low and sell high. This is a play on the fact that the Japanese words for turnip (蕪) and stock (株) are both pronounced "kabu". The English localizations maintain the spirit of the joke by calling this trade the "Stalk Market".
• Rhythm Heaven Fever: The Japanese version of the game has the "Manzai" endless minigame, where the boke bird Kosuke rattles off various Japanese puns involving homophones, like "Ume wa umei" ("The plum was delicious") and "Mikan ga mikkannai" ("I can't find the orange").
• Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It: The puzzles in "Shopping Bizarre" revolve around homophones, like having to wrangle a chocolate moose by turning it into a chocolate mousse. Among other things, you can remove a jamb in a door by turning it into jam, and turn a tax into some tacks.
• Counterfeit Monkey: The homonym paddle in the bar lets turn an item into another that sounds the same, but has a different meaning. You can try it out by ordering some drinks: a Rusty Nail and a Screwdriver will turn into the genuine article. Items you find elsewhere are allowed, too; the "jigsaw" (a puzzle piece) will turn into an industrial saw once the paddle hits it.
• C14 Dating: If Melissa chooses to protect Joan while gathering vines for the festival, which is the option that will lock the player in Joan's romantic route, Rosemarie and Chantal will suspect something happened while Melissa and Joan were alone. Since Melissa is embarrassed to have protected Joan from a threat that turned out to be a bear-shaped cutout being moved by Augustin, Joan only goes as far as mentioning the word "bear" with little context. Rosemarie and Chantal understand the word "bare", which just makes Rosemarie ask what, exactly was bared.
• Splatoon 2: In the announcement for the game's "Vampire vs. Werewolf" Splatfest, Pearl confuses Marina's talking about how vampires can be killed with stakes (i.e., a wooden spike) with steaks (i.e., meat), prompting her to admonish her partner for the "mistake", before spending the rest of the announcement rambling about the eating habits of both supernatural creatures.
  Pearl: Steaks? Get real, Marina.
  Marina: OK, Pearl...
• In Skyrim, a clue in a journal for how to open the door to Myrwatch is "When the eye is doused in flames, the hair will light the way." The clue comes complete with the journal-writer's bewildered commentary regarding the hair. Well, no, actually the hare — as in, a ghostly bunny — will light the way.
• Doom Eternal does this with its tagline. It's a game about demons raising Hell on Earth, and the tagline tells you what you need to do in response: "Raze Hell."

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: In "Blake vs. Mikasa", Wiz describes Blake Belladonna as a guerilla fighter. Boomstick scolds him and says Blake is not a gorilla.
• Yahtzee Croshaw will use these in his Zero Punctuation series. Illustrating the dialog with alternate words with the same pronunciation. "Butt Weight" was used to subtitle "But Wait!" Adding confusion for the sake of humor.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick:
  • The Moment of Awesome for Hulk Speak delivered by Thog: it's mind-blowingly accurate while utterly incomprehensible when spoken (it helps if you know that Nale is one of the main characters and that he has an evil twin, ie not-Nale, named Elan. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo etc.
    Thog: not nale, not-nale. thog help nale nail not-nale, not nale. and thog knot not-nale while nale nail not-nale. nale, not not-nale, now nail not-nale by leaving not-nale, not nale, in jail.
  • "It's a Type of Boat"
    Lien: This is your junk.
    Hinjo: But why aren't there any citizens aboard it yet?
    Lien: Your uncle was a very private person, sir. He forbade anyone from touching his junk.
    Hinjo: Well, that end now. My uncle may have kept his junk to himself, but my junk will be for the people!
    Are there still evacuees waiting to board a ship?
    Lien: Oh, yes, sir, I imagine I'll have no trouble finding people willing to get aboard your junk.
    It should be able to hold many passengers.
    Hinjo: I agree, my junk appears to be quite long...
    Roy: Wider than I would have expected, too.
    Hinjo: Very well, Lien, you hold my junk here until it is fully loaded.
    Lien: That could take some time, Lord Hinjo...
    Hinjo: I don't care how long it takes, I don't want my junk to launch prematurely.
  • Inverted: In "The Name of the Windy", Durkon neglected to prepare Control Winds although they were going to the WINDY Canyon, because he thought it was called the "Windy" Canyon, as in full of winding passages. Vaarsuvius lampshades the fact that it shouldn't have happened because the words are homographs (spelled the same, but with different pronunciations), not homophones.
  • In "Hearing Is Believing", a character assumes the weird prayer he's hearing is directed to Thor and goes "Hell no, Thor won't go!" Actually, the priest in question is secretly following Hel and is chanting "Go, Hel! Know? Thor won't!"
  • In "He Assumed It Was a Cholesterol Thing", Belkar is trying to make wooden stakes to fight a vampire, and mentions he had difficulty trying to do it earlier. Cue flashback of him making steaks and talking to a cook, who evidently just called it out or lampshaded it:
    Belkar: No, you're a homophone!!
• In Ozy and Millie, Millie spends quite a few strips trying to set up a situation where she asks Ozy "Do you want your palm read?", he says yes, and she gets to paint his palm with the bucket of red paint she's been carrying around. It never quite works out; Ozy figures out what's going on almost immediately but is perfectly willing to watch her continue to try.
• The title of every The Non-Adventures of Wonderella strip is one of these.
• The strip called "Gnome Ann" in xkcd. Gnome Ann is a formidable character who does things that it is said "no man" does. So, time and tide wait for Gnome Ann, Gnome Ann was born wise, and the wicked flee when Gnome Ann pursues. She also qualifies for Gnome Ann of Woman Born, as it were, and the Star Trek guys are only following in her footsteps.
• Sluggy Freelance: In "The Heroic Adventures of Binky and Clyde", the protagonists mess up a Virgin Sacrifice to dragons because they choose the most "chased" woman in the village instead of "chaste".
• Sam & Fuzzy has the titular Sam being interrogated by the Ninja Mafia elders as a candidate for Emperor in a You Kill It, You Bought It scenario. At one point one of the elders disbelievingly questions Sam's statement that he killed his predecessor with his "bare hands," and Sam, realizing how unlikely that sounds, says that he meant he used his secret martial arts technique of "bear hands".
• In Yokoka's Quest, Yfa mentions "the sea". Yokoka doesn't know what this is, and thinks he's talking about "the see" (which she later misremembers as "the look" and "the sight"). The French version has her mistake "la mer" for the homophone "l'amer" ^note ("the sea" for "the bitter"), with the ensuing dialogue and illustrations adapted to fit.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  • One a strip is about how to cover up for accidentally saying "You too" in response to "Have a good trip" — mostly using homophones.
  "I'm hopeful a man named Mr. Yu also had a good trip."
  • In a strip possible called "Cog", this is invoked sadistically by the invention of the word "hoamuhphone", which is a synonym for "homonym" and, of course, homophone for "homophone". Just try to explain all those terms understandably now.
• The written heteronym form is used in Bob and George. In Mega Man 2, Bubble Man's weapon is called Bubble Lead because it leads the way for Mega Man, but the author misread it as a weapon that shoots bubbles made out of the heavy metal lead. Cue Mega Man crushing Flash Man under a pile of toxic lead bubbles.

Web Videos

• At the end of Saberspark's review for the Balto trilogy, Saber praises the original movie for its sincerity and quality. He says the same for "The Land Before Time, too! (Beat) I mean, uh, The Land Before Time also, not "Number Two"^note The Great Valley Adventure, which he complained for being the product of invoked Sequelitis!"

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Gummi Bears: After Tummi eats a cursed fruit and starts to show symptoms of turning into a tree.
  Zummi: You're leafing!
  Tummi: But I'm not going anywhere.
• The Angry Beavers:
  • In "Muscular Beaver 4", while Daggett is in his superhero alter ego and pitting himself against Toe-Bot (Daggett talking for him of course), Toe-Bot warns Daggett of his mastery of Toe-Fu, to which Daggett responds: "Tofu? The soybean rich protein extract?"
  • When the duo are sold as dogs to a suburban family, the father takes them on a walk and tells them to heel, which they don't understand; "Maybe he thinks we're sick?". The two brothers end up removing his shoes thinking they meant the heels of his footwear.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "The King of Omashu", Katara demands that King Bumi release them by saying, "Let us leave". Bumi responds with, "Lettuce Leaf?".
• In one episode of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, after Dale, suffering from Easy Amnesia from a conk on the head, regains his memory after getting another conk:
  Chip: Dale, you're back!
  Dale: Forget my back. It's my head that's killing me!
• In Claymation Comedy of Horrors, Wilshire Pig searches a castle for a Mad Scientist's lab, but it's currently filled with a gathering of monsters for a Halloween jamboree. He asks the monster working the registration desk if she knew where the laboratory is and she gives him directions; Jump Cut to Wilshire in a public restroom.
  Wilshire: Lavatory. I hate homophones.
• A fake commercial in The Critic has Orson Welles promoting frozen peas "full of country goodness and green pea-ness", then immediately walking out when he realizes what he just said.
  Welles: Wait, that's terrible. I quit!
• Dead End: Paranormal Park
  • One episode has Pugsley bring a bunch of old mascot costumes to life due to some Power Incontinence after a heated argument with Barney, all of them saying "MEAT!" It's later revealed that it's not meat they're after, rather it's a chance to meet and greet.
  • Another episode features a man called Harmony who gets the park employees to do some trust activities... Or so it seems. He's actually a demon called Harm Many who wants to make them scared enough so he can eat their fear.
• The Fairly OddParents!: The Oh Yeah! Cartoons short "Party of Three" has an example combined with Joke of the Butt where Vicky stammers "but" in response to a photograph she took of Timmy Turner fooling around without adult supervision being changed by Cosmo and Wanda's magic into a photo of Mr. Turner in boxer shorts as well as Timmy doing the same in response to his parents deciding to continue hiring Vicky as his babysitter after all. Both occasions have Mr. Turner misinterpret them as talking about his rear end.
  Mr. Turner: What is this fascination with my fanny?
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • In "Crime After Crime", Mr. Herriman finds out his carrot stash has been stolen. When he calls the police, he tells them that the thief must have stolen 100 carrots. The police believe he's referring to karats, meaning diamonds, and rush over to Foster's. Meanwhile, Bloo hides some diamonds in Mac's backpack as a last resort to get sent to his room without supper so he won't have to eat an indescribable dish called "it". When Mr. Herriman gets the backpack, he is surrounded by the police, who tell him to drop the diamonds. He assures them that there aren't any diamonds in it, just carrots. When he opens Mac's backpack to prove it to them, he finds the stolen diamonds in it, and the police say "Yes, Sir. About a hundred of them.", once again believing he was referring to karats, and arrest him for theft.
  • "Affair Weather Friends" has Berry attempt to get Bloo's attention by pretending to be a rich kid named Barry Bling, which eventually leads to Mac unsuccessfully trying to get it through to Bloo that Barry and Berry are one and the same.
• The Futurama episode "My Three Suns" has Fry become emperor of an alien race made of liquid. Leela tries to warn him that he'll be assassinated, and that half of the former emperors have been drunk at their own coronation. Fry retorts that he was already planning on having a few beers before the ceremony.
• In the Goldie & Bear episode "Think or Swim", Humpty Dumpty shouts "high," trying to warn Goldie and Bear that they're filling the Giant's bathtub too high. Unfortunately, they think he's just saying "Hi."
• The Gravity Falls episode "Headhunters" has a scene in which Mabel and Dipper attempt to sneak into a bar to interrogate one of their suspects for a mystery they're trying to solve. After making fake IDs, the scene cuts to a bouncer looking at an ID and saying "Sorry, we don't serve minors", before revealing that he's actually talking to a miner who storms off.
• In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021), Kronis grouses that he was about to eat a sandwich before Skeletor removed his jaw brace to empower it with Havoc. As he walks off, Evelyn muses to herself that she once knew a sand witch.
• In Hercules: The Animated Series, Hercules confuses the words "gyro" and "hero" on career day, thinking he's going to be working at "Hero World" when he's actually been assigned to a food cart called "Gyro World".
• House of Mouse:
  • A plot point of the Mickey MouseWorks short "Mickey's April Fools" is Mickey having an inheritance of one million bucks. By the end of the short, it turns out that the bucks are male deer rather than dollars.
  • In one of the House segments, Daisy is working the front desk and announces "Sorry, but we don't allow miners in the club" to the Seven Dwarfs.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: In "Armor of the Gods", Uncle teaches Jade the spell to seal the demon Dai Gui. He says that one of the ingredients is hair of ewe, but she thinks he said "hair of you" and uses some of her own hair, which doesn't work. Uncle has to clarify that an ewe is a female sheep.
• In the Kaeloo episode "Let's Play Golf", Kaeloo tells Stumpy that he needs to use a tee. He mistakes it for "tea" and asks why he can't have coffee.
• In "Larry & Steve", Steve the dog tries to convince Larry to adopt him.
  Steve: Listen. If you don't get me out of here, I will be put to sleep, do you understand me?! You will be indirectly responsible for the resulting euthanasia!
  Larry: Oh, boy, they got enough kids over there as it is.
• The Expository Theme Tune for My Gym Partner's a Monkey explains that this is the trigger for the show's premise of a human going to a school for animals, with Adam's last name of 'Lyon' being mistaken for 'Lion', resulting in him getting transferred to Charles Darwin Middle School. It's lampshaded near the end of the series that it's obvious that the clerical error is never going to be cleared up.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Molt Down", Smolder explains to Spike that young dragons have to worry about being eaten by hydras, tatzlwurms, and rocs. Spike gets confused and thinks she is talking about rocks, so she clarifies that she meant Roc Birds.
• Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Special has a bit where Grand-mah is addressed as "great Grand-mah", and she responds by cheerfully asking if her mother's here.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Neptune's Ball", Patrick comes across an invitation with the monogrammed letter "U" on it (for Upturn, its intended recipient). Squidina says, "oh, that means it's for you!", and Patrick accepts it.
• From the Ready Jet Go! episode "Constellation Prize":
  Jet: No way! A dog star? You can't be serious.
  Dr. Rafferty: Actually, it is Sirius.
  Jet: I get that it's serious, but I wonder what the star is called.
  Dr. Rafferty: It's Sirius.
  Jet: What's serious? I just want to know what the dog star's name is.
  Dr. Rafferty: It's seriously called Sirius.
  Jet: Whoa! Slow down...
• Robot Chicken:
  • A segment in the style of School House Rock regarding homonyms.
    Girl: 'Cause there are words that sound the same/Like "dam", and "pecker", and "gay"/And then some words are spelled the same/Like "knockers", and "cock", and "snatch"!
  • In a sketch wherein the Peanuts gang get various countries for a geography assignment, Charlie Brown states "I got Iraq."
• Rocky and Bullwinkle: In the Fractured Fairy Tales cartoon "Snow White Inc", upon being told by her mirror that Snow White is the fairest in the land, the Queen gives her a poison apple. Afterwards, she goes back to her mirror, who tells her that he meant Snow White is the fairest in that she never lied, cheated, or stole. The Queen is the prettiest.
• Seven Little Monsters: In "Losing Sam", Five points out a manhole cover labeled "Y" and his brother Four mistakes him for exclaiming "Why".
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Margical History Tour", during the story of Henry VIII, when Sir Thomas More (portrayed by Ned Flanders) protests Henry VIII (portrayed by Homer Simpson) starting his own church, Henry VIII declares that because he stuck to his principles, he was going to canonize him. Cut to More being shot out of a cannon.
  • In "Rednecks and Broomsticks" had Lisa befriend a group of Wiccan girls. One day, she discovers that she has a witch-like substitute teacher filling in for Ms. Hoover, who claimed that she couldn't teach today because of "a spell of stomach flu". Paranoid that her new friends had Ms. Hoover indisposed as some kind of twisted favor, she panics when the substitute teacher then asks "Lisa, which craft?", the joke being that "which craft" sounds like "witchcraft".
• In the South Park episode "Jared Has Aides"... well, it's all there in the title. To elaborate, then-spokesman Jared makes the town upset to the point of a lynch mob by apparently repeating he'd that like to give all the kids what helped him lose weight: "AIDS". He's actually saying 'aides'; people to aid them.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "The Great Snail Race", Squidward boasts that his pet snail is a purebred. Patrick thinks he's saying his snail is made of bread.
  • "The Whole Tooth" plays with the legend of the Tooth Fairy by revealing in the end that SpongeBob was actually talking about a tooth ferry.
• Steven Universe:
  • In "Sadie Killer", Sadie starts making up a song about how much she hates her job, with at one point the lyrics going into how she can't be in mourning in regards to Lars being stranded on an alien planet because she has to work yet another shift in the morning due to currently being the only employee at her store.
    I really ought to be in mourning/but I've got another shift this morning.
  • In "Made of Honor", Bismuth is told she could be maid of honor at a wedding, but misunderstanding it as the titular line because she doesn't know what a wedding is.
• Superman: The Animated Series twice makes a joke of someone talking about Superman's "S": once when Lois first sees a picture and says he has a "nice S", and when Lobo threatens to kick his "big red S".
• Tangled: The Series:
  • Eugene thought King Frederic wanted his help to prank King Trevor by stealing a document known as the Royal Seal of Equis. It turns out to be King Trevor's pet seal, Trevor Jr., instead.
  • Throughout Season 1, there are multiple references to what seems to be a Noodle Incident involving Eugene getting on the Baron's bad side by stealing his prized stallion. Come Season 2, Rapunzel learns that Stalyan is actually the name of the Baron's daughter, whom Eugene dated and then left at the altar.

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