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Press L1 to get a helpful analysis! "Well... I had an Uncle Richard that tried to bring nude theater to a festival in Waterdeep... Exposure is usually good for an actor's career, but even so, a cold reception for the play caused the cast to shrink steadily. Blackballed, my uncle tried to recruit from the thieves' guild, but they wouldn't let their nick-ers go. 'Just bare with me,' he would say, but they were afraid of being stripped of their dignity. He gave up the lead to attract new members, and eventually the production's genius was uncovered, even with his part left out."
A sudden, protracted volley of puns. Approach this technique with caution, as viewer nausea (or a lynch mob) may be a side-effect. (See Incredibly Lame Pun.)
In a Sit Com, a Hurricane Of Puns often appears after one or two characters have done something embarrassing and decide to not talk about it. Naturally, every conversation they have is rife with unintentional puns and Freudian Slips that go unnoticed by others but drive them to sheer panic.
On the other hand, sometimes these storms approach from the opposite direction... One person cracks a pun, another feels the urge to one-up it, and so it goes until the ammunition is exhausted and the puns fall silent.
Rarely, someone will just rattle off a string of puns for the hell of it.
Puns are a dangerous form of comedy, and it takes a good hand to make them into something that won't incite a mass groan of disapproval. Doing this repeatedly is even riskier, as it requires an amazingly level of ability to play straight on most television aimed at mature viewers.
In Anime, the Gag Series is also famous for using the Hurricane Of Puns. Japanese comedy is quite fond of puns and malapropisms, because of how certain words and names in the Japanese language can be misquoted or alternatively written. This is one reason why many Widget Series don't translate into other languages very well, or get treated to a Gag Dub instead. Puns that must be explained usually end up not being funny.
This is a subtrope of Rapid Fire Comedy. Compare Hurricane Of Euphemisms, and see Just For Pun.
Examples
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Anime
- The English dub of Bobobobo Bobobo makes even less sense, because the original Japanese version was pretty much a Hurricane Of Puns that didn't translate very well.
- The same goes for Yakitate!! Japan, which fits this trope like a glove. One chapter was even entitled "Bald Jokes Never Get Old!"
- Dotto Koni-chan was the same. The Latin-America dubbers opted by using local slang and a very enthusiastic voice cast that had lots of fun with their roles. It worked
- The original Team Rocket Trio of Pokemon fame has a tendency to launch into these, occasionally to the point of being physically 'pun'-ished by other characters, including themselves.
- The german version actually manages to make it WORSE and even more annoying at times, by trying to translate every single english pun into german and even inventing new ones were there were none before... OK, let's just say that Team Rocket is speaking ja-pun-nese in german.
- Also, almost every single Pokemon on the list has a Punny Name, often spanning languages.
- The opening credits of Galaxy Angel are exercises in advanced punnery, in English, Japanese, and what's being shown on the screen.
- In the Record Of Lodoss War TV series omake, they spoof the warrior training that King Kashew gives Parn by replacing it with lessons in how to pun properly. This is the same omake where the wise and level-headed sorcerer is played as a Dirty Old Man, and the skilled and just knight is portrayed as a clueless kid. (Let's not forget the high-elf-turned-ditz.)
- Used in the manga sequence of episode 1 of FLCL. Some of it even made it through in translation.
- Izumi in Martian Successor Nadesico tends to use about half of her dialogue to make puns. In a late episode, when someone else cracks a pun, the camera cuts to her rating him. She's apparently a harsh judge.
From the Christmas episode: Izumi: I told that young woman to marry my friend Chris. Marry Chris, Miss.
Izumi: I ran out of tea strainers, so I had to use this old copy of Shakespeare. Now I've got The Tempest in a teapot. That's trouble brewing.
- Gintama utilizes a lot of Japanese puns, some of which are more or less translatable. One notable exception was a mix-up between bank transactions and throwing rice, which was even brought to attention in the official English translation.
- Similarly, Akazukin Chacha, the main character randomly makes puns whenever she can. This personality trait is the reason why most of her spells tend to fail, she's always thinking of an alternate meaning for the word she just used, such as summoning spiders instead of clouds in the first episode. (In Japanese the words are the same)
- Ranma 1/2 has a decent amount of punning, most of it coming from Kasumi, although Genma and Soun are always willing to help.
- The 4Kids dub of One Piece. Almost unarguably, one of the reasons it was such an appalling failure was the fact that it was essentially a nonstop hurricane of puns. Even with the most serious villains and in the most desperate situations, every time a character spoke, it was deliver yet another horrible pun.
- Of course, the character hit the hardest by this almost assuredly Mr. 3. In the Japanese series, he was depicted as somewhat cowardly and weak, but also clever and sneaky enough to accomplish tasks that much stronger characters couldn't manage, such as bringing down two giants. 4Kids showed him only once, having him spend the whole time delivering pathetic jokes for no particular reason.
- One Piece has always had a love of terrible puns, often related to the way words and phrases are written in kanji. One particularly shining example is the fight between Zoro and Kaku in Enies Lobby, where almost every line is a pun on either "giraffe", "nose", or "square".
- In episode 5 of Naruto: The Abridged Series, after Kakashi is trapped in a water ball by Zabuza, Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke barrage the viewer with such unbelievably lame puns, even Kakashi gets annoyed:
[Time for Bad Pun Olympics!!]
Sasuke: I wonder what's in that Wonderball...
Sakura: Who's that Pokemon?
Naruto: It's Kakashi! Well, that's the Circle of Life for ya!
Sasuke: Hey, Kakashi, having a ball?
Naruto: At least you're getting your water aerobics done!
Kakashi: Oh, for the love of God, stop already!
- This trope is the sole motivation behind Fireball.
- The creator of Sailor Moon is said to love puns. Tsukino Usagi, read last name first as Japanese people read names, also sounds like "rabbit of the moon", which is a(n universal) reference to the bunny-shaped shape one can detect when looking at the moon.
- This is the case for all of the Inners, as their surnames all end in "no".
- In Death Note, L can really make you L O L. Misa at one point says she cannot live without Light, and L says "Yes, that would be quite dark." Light says to cut it out, and I thought, hmm, well, its getting late, better cut off the Lights. At the end, in the part of the ending with a laughing Light, I cut off the Lights
- In Hajime No Ippo: New Challenger, one of the later episodes has Ippo visit with the family of the gym's new rookie, Itagaki... only to find out that the entire family is addicted to bad puns. During the supper, they let fly with such a multi-directional hurricane of terrible, terrible puns, that even Ippo - an experienced boxer known for his inhuman toughness - is up against the ropes, desperately searching for any subject - ANYTHING - that will allow him to stop the barrage...
- However! Takamura cannot handle to be second-best at anything, and so he challenges the Itagaki-family to a Bad Pun Showdown! OOOH! How Much More Can He Take?!?
- Hikaru "Dabide" Amane from the Rokkaku team is absolutely crazy for puns and does his best to crack them at the smallest chance. His doubles partner and sempai Kurobane aka "Bane-san" is always ready to play Straight Man and kick him on the head.
Comic Books
- The Asterix comics probably have one of the highest pun to panel ratio known to man. Naturally, all translations require intense Woolseyism, which the translators thankfully deliver.
- Actually, there is another comics, to which Goscinny also cooperated, that is even better (or worse...) when it comes to puns. It is called "Iznogoud" and übergestopft with puns.
- In one Sonic The Hedgehog comic (emphasis in original):
Sonic: I don't want to go out on a limb, but I wood like to get to the root of Sally's problem! I'd be a sap if I wanted to leaf! As forest that's concerned, I'll try to cedar through this thing fir sure! If knot, I'll be pine-ing and weeping! I'd much rather take a bough! Oak-k?
- In The Goodies Annual of 1974, a comic inside it had Bill ordering a fish dinner.
"Are you the cod, sir?"
"I'm the hungry sole with the empty plaice waiting for someone to fillet. Get your skates on, squid - I'm starving!"
Film
- Zazu's "morning report" in The Lion King is basically a dumping ground for all sorts of animal puns.
Zazu: Well, the buzz from the bees is that the leopards are in a bit of a spot. And the baboons are going ape over this. Of course, the giraffes are acting like they're above it all... The tick birds are pecking on the elephants. I told the elephants to forget it, but they can't... The cheetahs are hard up, but I always say, cheetahs never prosper...
- The first two Austin Powers movies had Austin spew a volley of these when he dispatched of villains in some gruesome way. This parodied the James Bond movies, where James would always have a nifty Bond One Liner ready for such occasions.
- The ending of the second movie does this after Dr. Evil's spaceship escapes, leading random characters to shout a Hurricane Of Euphemisms for his... uniquely-shaped ship.
- It was done in the first movie as well, for a different shape.
- Eventually, after a suitable length of time had passed, Austin's 'love-interest-du-jour' would end up saying something along the lines of 'Okay, we've given the villain enough time to get away by punning', leading to general agreement and a quick exit.
- And again in the third where it even gets lampshaded by Ozzy Osbourne saying they did the exact same joke the previous two movies. Further parodied in that he used the words everyone else was deliberately avoiding ("Boobs!") but in a non-mammarial context.
- The joke is that they're all out of context! The satellite was shape like a pair of breasts (Boobs), and Ozzy was bitching about how everyone doing the joke is stupid (a bunch of f***ing boobs)! We all know what they're doing; we just don't want to admit it.
- Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones features a lengthy battle sequence wherein comic relief robot C-3PO finds his head accidentally placed on a battle droid's body, and a battle droid head placed on his body. Many painful puns about being "quite beside myself" ensue.
- "She seems to be on top of things." Attack of the Clones turned Obi-Wan into a Deadpan Snarker.
- In The Movie of The Wild Wild West, whenever Jim West (Will Smith) and the Big Bad (who lost his legs in the Civil War) meet, their verbal spars generally devolve into a string of black and half-man puns.
- Somewhat similarly, Scary Movie 2 has this exchange between Hanson (the caretaker with a deformed hand) and Dwight Hartman (Who is in a wheelchair):
Dwight: Okay, thanks, "Handyman".
Hanson: I'm actually the caretaker. Oh, aren't those cool new skates? Now you be careful with those, you don't want to fall and break something.
Dwight: Oh, that's funny, that's real funny. Um, let me give you a "hand." [starts clapping hands]
Hanson: Why, that's awful kind of you. Why don't you give me a "standing ovation?"
Dwight: Why don't you "lift me up?"
Hanson: Ha, ok, I see where you're going with this one. You look familiar to me. Were you in "STOMP"?
Dwight: Hey you can kiss my grits!
Hanson: I think I'll be the bigger man, now, and walk away. "Walk" away.
- Much of the humor in the Marx Brothers movies is based on puns. Here's one example from Horse Feathers, where Chico is keeping people from entering a speakeasy without the password (which is "swordfish"), and Groucho is guessing fish names:
Wagstaff: I got it! Haddock! Baravelli: 'At's-a funny, I gotta haddock too. Wagstaff: What do you take for a haddock? Baravelli: Well now, sometimes I take aspirin, sometimes I take a calomel. Wagstaff: I'd walk a mile for a calomel. Baravelli: You mean chocolate calomel. I like that too, but you no guess it.
- And then there's Groucho's big speech as Captain Spaulding in Animal Crackers: "We tried to remove the tusks, but they were embedded so firmly we couldn't budge them. Of course, in Alabama the Tuscaloosa, but that is entirely ir-elephant to what I was talking about. We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed."
- The trial scene in Duck Soup gave us:
Groucho: Look at Chicolini, he sits there alone, an abject figure. Chicolini: I abject! Groucho: Look at Chicolini, he sits there alone, a pitiable object...let's see you get out of that one.
- This toper's favourite scene from the same movie was when Groucho launced into:
Groucho: You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.
- Nearly every single line
 spoken by Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin amounts to a part of an extensive hurricane blizzard of ice-based puns.
- "No-one's mentioned Airplane! yet.
" "Surely you can't be serious."
"I am serious,and don't call me Shirley."
- Pretty much the whole point of the Sphinx in Mystery Men.
Literature
- In John Dies at the End, John distracts a roomful of vengeful, trans-dimensional monsters by hitting them with chairs, while spouting out numerous chair-related puns unashamedly.
- Piers Anthony's Xanth series of books, which is one Hurricane Of Puns after another. The original first chapter of Crewel Lye actually had to removed because of pun-density.
- Piers Anthony also regularly publishes a list in the back of his book, thanking the people that took the time to write in with their puns.
- Spider Robinson loves these, usually devoting large portions of his Callahan's Crosstime Saloon books to punning contests.
- In fact, Tuesday night is known as Punday night at Callahans-with the winner's tab being on the house. Its gotten so bad, that "Folks who come into the place for the first time on a Tuesday evening have been known to flee screaming into the night, leaving full pitchers of beer behind in their haste to be elsewhere."
- In one story, "Did You Hear The One About..." we meet Josie Bauer, a "humor groupie", who had taken to going home(and having sex) with whoever won Punday Night or Tall Tale Thursday. She turns out to be a time-cop and arrests a charlatan who claimed to be an Intergalactic Traveling Salesman. She then let it slip that her father was science fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer, turning the story into the ultimate "Did You Hear The One About The Traveling Salesman And The Farmer's Daughter?" joke.
- The Phantom Tollbooth was filled with these, most of which the book's intended target audience is unlikely to get.
- The Clue book series often has characters engage in themed pun-filled dialog with each other, often referring to whatever the guests are trying to steal. Occasionally the puns even contains clues to help solve the mystery.
- In the Sir Apropos of Nothing series, Peter David managed to put the Hurricane Of Puns in map form. Look at the maps in the beginning of each book, and you'll get it. (Example: In the third book, "Tong Lashing", the rivers on the map (in a Japanese-like land) are named "Lai-See", "Crimea", "Olmun", and "Mün".)
- Angela Thirkell did this back in the 1940s and 50s, in her Barsetshire series: Towns and villages in the Barsetshire district include Fleece, Worsted, Winter Overcotes, and Winter Underclose. The main watercourse in the area is the Rising River. There's more on the endpaper maps if you can find any of the books.
- Finnegans Wake is written entirely in multi-lingual puns- including dead languages- a revelation that makes reading it even more painful.
- Terry Pratchett uses these all the time in the Discworld series. Nanny Ogg, in particular, will employ several in a row, usually having to do with something naughty. Most of the time they are straight puns, but when Death uses them, he usually ends up having to point them out to whomever he's said them to (usually the recently deceased, who understandably have other things on their minds) by saying: That was a pune, or, play on words, or similar.
- Even the narration is fully of puns. In Lords and Ladies, he points out that a witch's broom is generally considered to be a sexual symbol—but, as the footnote tells us, "this is a phallusy."
- "The Mock Turtle's Story" in Alice In Wonderland consists mainly of puns.
- L. Frank Baum was very fond of puns. An example, from The Emerald City of Oz:
"I'd like to smooth this thing over, in some way," said a flatiron, earnestly. "We are supposed to be useful to mankind, you know."
"But the girl isn't mankind! She's womankind!" yelled a corkscrew.
"What do you know about it?" inquired the King.
"I'm a lawyer," said the corkscrew, proudly. "I am accustomed to appear at the bar."
"But you're crooked," retorted the King, "and that debars you. You may be a corking good lawyer, Mr. Popp, but I must ask you to withdraw your remarks."
"Very well," said the corkscrew, sadly; "I see I haven't any pull at this court."
"Permit me," continued the flatiron, "to press my suit, your Majesty. I do not wish to gloss over any fault the prisoner may have committed, if such a fault exists; but we owe her some consideration, and that's flat!"
- Shakespeare is full of this, although many of the puns do not translate to a modern audience unless you read the annotated plays, since they rely on outdated slang and Forgotten Tropes.
- Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures is most definitely this, although quite a bit more high-brow than the Piers Anthony books, they can still get pretty bad.
- Welkin Weasels is loaded down with Shout Out-based puns. See the dreaded Manless Horsehead of Sleepless Hallow (the ghostly disembodied head of a riderless horse), the bandit known as Batch Cussidy "on account of I'm always using swear words in bunches", the vampiric Nosfuratoo, and a non-Shout Out sequence of puns in the form of the conversation about guns which leads to Spindrick Sylver's downfall when he goes hunting for the "steam-driven pistol" invented by William Jott. As it turns out, Jott actually invented a form of mining equipment; "Blasting guns with steam-driven pistons - not pistols - which drive a wheel a thousand revolutions - not rounds - a minute." Also, the Whos On First sequence with Spindrick as The Weasel Who Is Tuesday, and Scirf barely escaping attack by a bear, which doesn't bear thinking about.
- Several definitions from The Devils Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce are like this, but his poems take the cake.
- How to tell the birds from the flowers. A manual of flornithology for beginners by R.W.Wood. It was made of this trope, with pictures to match (and a mockery of bad schoolbooks of those times).
- The final chapters of Cynthia Ozick's first novel, Trust, succumb to a whirlwind of puns on "purse."
- The last page of every Uncle Johns Bathroom Reader (a humor/reference book) has always included the following:
Fellow bathroom readers: The fight for good bathroom reading should never be taken loosely — we must do our duty and sit firmly for what we believe in, even while the rest of the world is taking potshots at us. We'll be brief. Now that we've proven we're not simply a flush-in-the-pan, we invite you to take the plunge: Sit Down and Be Counted! Become a member of the Bathroom Readers' Institute[…]Well, we're out of space, and when you've gotta go, you'e gotta go. Tanks for all your support. Hope to hear from you soon. Meanwhile, remember: Go with the flow!
- Joe's World is more or less built on this trope.
Live Action TV
- In the last seasons of Beakmans World (the ones with Phoebe), most segments would devolve into at least one Hurricane Of Puns on the subject matter at hand. Example: Lester describes his breakup with Wanda the Cow: "That honeyMOOOOOOOOOOn is over! I milked the relationship for all it was worth! I don't know what her beef was! One day she just put me out to pasture! The whole thing was an udder disaster!" (And this is tame compared to some of the other ones...)
- In the early days of Smallville, Clark would crack a joke every now and then, possibly as reference to the comic book fuel of the show. Somewhere along the lines, the writers decided it be for the best to have just about every character we come across spew tedious, long-winded puns, even within the most out-of-place situations.
- Mock The Week featured one of these in a story about vegetables. Lines such as 'This plan is half-baked!', 'We shall launch a Spud missile' and many others than are forgotten featured.
- The "Mastermind" sketch from The Two Ronnies is a premium example of this, where by staggering the question-and-answer process, every line becomes a pun
Q: “And so to our first contender. Good evening and can I have your name, please?”
A: “Ah…good evening.”
Q: “Your chosen subject was answering questions before they were asked. This time you have chosen to answer the question before last, correct?”
A: “Charlie Smithers.”
Q: “And your time starts now. What is palaeontology?”
A: “Yes, absolutely correct.”
Q: “What is the name of the directory that lists members of the peerage?”
A: “A study of old fossils.”
Q: “Correct. Who are Len Murray and Sir Geoffrey Howe?”
A: “Burke’s.” (And so on...)
- The Doctor Who First Doctor story "The Romans" features the Doctor employ a series of puns about him possibly being eaten by lions in the arena if Nero has his way (he's not there at the time)- "Go down well", "palatable", "roaring performance".
- "The Unicorn and the Wasp" features dozens of Agatha Christie puns including Murder at the Vicar's Rage.
- How It's Made has done this with every product they have shown (more than 350 products). Just pay attention to what the narrator says.
- The Crypt Keeper used these a lot for his opening bits in Tales From The Crypt.
- Flabber from Beetleborgs used these on a regular basis- and most of them were literal ones too ala Beetle Juice.
- The narrator on Mythbusters delivers dozens of puns per episode with a folksy twang.
- Although the Mythbusters teams occasionally do this themselves.
- It should also be noted that the "Folksy Twang" is actually the vestiges of the narrator's Australian accent coming through.
- Richard Dean Anderson's character on Stargate SG-1 was written as a sarcastic soldier-type; inevitably, this turned him into a wisecracking cynic, which served to increase the overall appeal of the character.
- One post-Anderson episode features the SGC scouring the galaxy to round up clones of Ba'al. Much mirth ensues.
(As Dr. Lee is at a map with points indicating Ba'al clones)
"Those are the Ba'als?"
"Well, more like dots, really."
(After rounding up their third clone on thier second mission)
"We've got a full count, sergeant. Two strikes, three Ba'als."
(And said to General Landry with an absolutely straight face')
"I heard you've got some extra Ba'als, general."
- Don't even get O'Neill started on Lord Yu.
- One two-part episode of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. featured The Professor creating a ligher-than-air airship. References included being financed by some German investor, Count von Zeppelin, who wanted it retrofitted with armaments and metal plating. "A lead zeppelin, huh? Could be your stairway to heaven." "If I sell just one of these, it'll be a good year!"
- Power Rangers Mystic Force has one episode where the Green Ranger overdoes it with a combination of his earth-based powers and a friend's perfection potion and ends up slowly turning into a tree over the course of the episode. When the other Rangers initially notice this, they feel the need to get out the obligatory greenery-based puns ('leaf him alone', 'knock on wood', etc.) before finally trying to help with the issue.
- Way back in Power Rangers Zeo, when Rocky was turning into a plant, he made a pass at Kat using plant-based pick-up lines.
- Night Court availed itself of all sorts of silliness, including puns.
"Your Honor, this is the third time the defendant has been caught breaking into the butcher shop."
"So, we meat again! Although I would have thought by now he'd have loined his lesson! But I guess you don't really understand what's at steak here!"
(Court audience groans)
"Aw, come on, guys, this is prime stuff!"
- The episode of Friends where Joey gets to be Al Pacino's body double for a naked shower scene is an unrelenting barrage of puns. Most memorable from that episode is the following exchange:
JOEY: ...I'm his butt double. 'Kay? I play Al Pacino's butt. Alright? He goes into the shower, and then- I'm his butt.
MONICA: (trying not to laugh) Oh my God.
JOEY: C'mon, you guys. This is a real movie, and Al Pacino's in it, and that's big!
CHANDLER: Oh no, it's terrific, it's- it's- y'know, you deserve this, after all your years of struggling, you've finally been able to crack your way into show business.
JOEY: Okay, okay, fine! Make jokes, I don't care! This is a big break for me!
ROSS: You're right, you're right, it is...So you gonna invite us all to the big opening?
- Time Warp uses these and frequently lampshades it.
- Gilmore Girls has at least one of these in almost every single episode.
- Hawkeye of M*A*S*H had a propensity for these. For instance, one episode has him contemplating a Korean family's ox, and talking about great ox-related movies ("The Ox-Bow Incident...A Yank at Oxford....The Wizard of Ox...Cow Green Was My Valley...nah, that's cheap.")
- Sometimes another character, such as B.J., would join him for a little back-and-forth punmanship.
B.J.: Get along, little dogie.
Hawkeye: I had a long, little doggie once.
B.J.: Really, what kind?
Hawkeye: He was a dachshund.
B.J.: Oh, a little hot dog. What happened to him?
Hawkeye: He got mustered out.
B.J.: I relish these conversations.
- One episode has Hawkeye and B.J. rattling off one groaner Shakespeare pun after another - when Major Winchester comments, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy", Hawkeye mutters, "I can't stand a guy who butchers Shakespeare."
- "this" sketch from Saturday Night Live.
- Don't forget Colonel Angus.
- Sabrina The Teenage Witch had an episode where Harvey was transformed into a spy and the villains main reason for wanting to kill him specifically to stop the puns.
- The episode of Scrubs My Blind Date has Elliot pulling one bad pun after another in the hope of impressing Dr. Cox.
- One episode of Ashes to Ashes sees everyone in the office suddenly start talking in the names of boy bands yet to come into existence, much to Alex's despair.
- This sketch by the Cambridge Footlights, read by a young
and really hot Stephen Fry.
- The writers at The Daily Show are unabashed pun-lovers. Example? For Jon' piece of the recent election debacle in Iran: "Sham-Wow!"
- Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, first episode:
Thornton Reed: (about Dagless, Garth's character) I hope he heeds my words about dealing with this in an orthodox manner.
Dr. Lucien Sanchez: He will. He's the best damn doctor on the wing, or any other wing for that matter.
Reed: He's a wild card.
Sanchez: But I'm glad he's in our deck.
Reed: Let's hope he plays a fair hand.
Sanchez: He'll come up trumps.
Reed: If there's not a joker in the pack, and sometimes there is!
- "You have now entered Garth Marenghi's darkplace."
- The Big Breakfast had a regular feature called "The Pun Down", which listed the best headline puns from that day's newspapers.
- Frasier, Season 5 Ep 11. Daphne (whom Niles secretly loves) is concerned that if Martin marries Sherry, who's "never liked" her, she may lose her job. Niles has this to say:
Even if by some chance that were to happen, Daphne, I could always use you.
I, I would know of a position you could take...
...services that you could perform.
I would know of an opening...
Music
Newspaper Comics
- Pearls Before Swine has a running gag where the entire comic is a setup for one of these, immediately followed by Rat berating the author for it. ("Do you think you can tempt me with amenities like anime, Annie Mae my sea anemone enemy?")
- In another "Pearls Before Swine," Pig is trying to watch "Gone With The Wind," but it keeps getting interrupted by a car ad, and the salesmen is Chinese, likes the Hoover dam, and is recovering from a drug problem. The punch line is "Frank Lee's car lot... High? Don't give a dam." The next panel has Rat saying that it's "Frankly, my dear."
Radio
- Most sitcoms on BBC Radio 4 depend heavily on puns and wordplay. I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (a Panel Game) has a whole game dedicated to these, in which contestants are told to come up with new definitions for words. Here's one which is technically broadcastable but utterly, utterly filthy:
Define 'countryside': Killing Piers Morgan.
- The game on I'm Sorry... is called "Uxbridge English Dictionary", itself a play on The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxbridge and the similarly named unremarkable town of Uxbridge.
- Several of the answers from these rounds were later released in book form.
- Someone want to explain that 'countryside' crack for the England-impaired among us?
- The man mentioned in the spoiler is a former newspaper editor widely considered to be an unpleasant person.
- If you still don't get it, compare to "matricide" and "homicide".
- Every episode of The Very World Of Milton Jones is one of these:
Angel: I heard that you had an attachment?
Milton: Yes, it was a polythene hood I could put on the back of my cape.
Angel: No, no, I meant you had a romantic interest.
Milton: Oh yes. It was the terrible dictator's daughter, Rose.
(scene change)
Milton: Rose, I have to tell you. Your father is a cruel and terrible man.
Rose: (gasp) That is a falsehood!
Milton: No, it's just made of polythene. Listen...
Role Playing Games
- Munchkin. Fire arms? They're arms... ON FIRE!. The Two-Handed Sword is a sword with two hands. They only get worse from here.
- you mean like the "stoned golem" ?
- Super Munchkin (the superhero-themed version) has some of the most groan-worthy monsters released for Munchkin. How about the Punster ("he Punishes you!"), or the Office supplies man ("a staple of comic fiction!" Oh and he has staples for arms...)?
- I can't believe that no one so far has mentioned Games Workshop and their entire Lizardman range. Tuini-Huini, the Slann Mage-Lord Chilipepa, the Skinks Copaqetl and Huezigon and the infamous Lustrian crater named Guacamole (holy guacamole)...
- With Tiqtaq-to, it moved right into Incredibly Lame Pun territory.
- Don't forget Kroq-Gar and his Carnosaur Grymloq (Later magazine articles also added heroes riding dinosaurs named Slaq and Zwup)
- Forgot us Skaven Trope-things? Quick quick! Bring out the Ratling Guns worthless slaves!
- The Horror game Don't Rest Your Head is quite fond of giving punny names to monsters. The Paperboys and the Ladies in Hating come to mind. Despite the lame puns, these are incredibly creepy horrors.
- A sizeable amount of the content in the Don't Rest Your Head supplement Don't Lose Your Mind. Most of the book is devoted to an A to M and a Z to N list of insanity powers, each and every one of which ahs at least one pun in the "What Are You becoming" section. The puns are pretty bad, Agony Ant and Yes Man, but the monsters they belong to are incredibly creepy, when not downright scary, plus, since the character is turning into these things, there's an added layer of body horror.
- It also comes up outside of names for Nightmares. For instance, there's the High School — which is literally high, being housed in the Mad City's tallest buildings — and is a finishing school — in that anyone who ends up there is pretty well finished, either turning into one of the aforementioned Ladies In Hating, or just disappearing. Meanwhile, Mother When has a yardstick which she uses to cut students down to size when they don't measure up. It's creepier than it sounds out of context.
Theater
- Some of Shakespeare's best examples include the scenes between Petruchio and Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew and between Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. These make this trope Older Than Steam.
- And let us not forget the pun-riddled opening of Romeo And Juliet. It's all downhill after that.
- I defy anyone to find a Shakespeare play that doesn't seriously overindulge in puns, regardless of genre.
- Each refrain of "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" from the musical Kiss Me Kate includes at least one pun on the title of a Shakespeare play.
- The Sweeney Todd number "A Little Priest" certainly qualifies as one of these, a wickedly funny string of allusions to personalities and flavors as the title character and Mrs. Lovett figure out how they'll dispose of Pirelli's body and make a tidy profit out of future customers, at the expense of the rival pie shop across the way.
- Don Juan and Miguel, a pair of famous Renaissance Faire actors and swordfighters, make dozens of puns during their shows. Most of them are good, but a lot of them are just cheesy.
Video Games
- Featured several times in the comic MMORPG Kingdom Of Loathing. Several encounters and item descriptions tend to degenerate into a Hurricane Of Puns. For example, the description for Gazpacho's Glacial Grimoire is loaded with plays on names of brands of refrigerator.
- Lampshaded, of course, in the confrontation with the Big Bad. The, uh, puns in general, I mean, not specifically the GGG description.
- (sort of:) Ask any Bemani fan about GETIT?! It's enough to give a guy a headache.
- Ratchet And Clank: Going Commando had a one-shot superhero/wrestler character named "The Mathematician", who spoke in nothing but math puns:
Mathematician: Nobody- I MEAN NOBODY- can solve The Mathematician!
Ratchet: I guess all the good names were taken?
Mathematician: Watch yer mouth, zero... before The Mathematician SUBTRACTS YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR SHOULDERS!
- Speaking of math puns, this page is incomplete without some mention of Sho Minamimoto.
Sho: "You zetta sons of digits!"
- The Quest For Glory series of adventure/rpg games loves these.
- A regular feature of the
RPG Dragon Fable ALL OF ARTIX ENTERTAINMENT'S GAMES. If you don't like this trope, they will make Your Head Asplode. Every single quest includes at least one pun (or at least a reference to some other movie/game/book/whatever) and every single knight in Oaklore Keep (except for Sir Baumbard, who says that he was never officially a knight there because "Sir" didn't work with his name) has a pun in their name (Sir Prize, Sir Charge, Sir Lee, Sir Vivor...) describing their personality. There's even a joke on a joke when Ash Dragonblade, a young boy in the town of Falconreach, laments that he'll never become a knight because his name isn't even a bad pun.
- Besides Oaklore, there's the Mill quest (basically a Multi Mook Melee followed by a really mind-scarring string of puns relating to trees), the Sand Witch (as bad as it sounds), and the names of half the quests and 75% of the weapons. If it's in Dragon Fable and it's not a pun, it's probably a Shout Out.
- In ArchKnight, a necromancer starts yelling at Ash for an especially dreadful string of puns.
- Adventure Quest is just as bad; the monster description for the Dark Knight is:
It sure is (*coughs*) dark at night. (This is why Demento does not let me write descriptions)
- The Ace Attorney series has a buttload of these instances, the most obvious being Apollo Justice before every case (and sometimes in between): "Here comes Justice!"
- Moe also has a good amount of puns in his speech in the second game, but it's mostly subverted, being that he's a clown.
- Though it's also partially played straight, as if you really get Moe going during testimony, the judge will punish you for doing it.
- Shuji Ikutsuki of Persona 3 performs one of these just for the hell of it in one of the "secret" recordings you can find in FES.
- Just about every name of the plants in Plants Vs Zombies is a pun on something.
- Don't forget the Zomboni.
- Sven T. Uncommon, the boss of Chapter 3 in Popful Mail (Working Designs' Sega CD translation) spouts off a bunch of references to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies during the gang's first encounter with him:
- Doctor Morris in Advance Wars Days Of Ruin, all bad, he makes a decent joke in the epilogue, to the surprise of Will.
- In the Lucas Arts game The Dig, the protagonist discovers a "light bridge." Cue a storm of light puns, including light snack and lighthouse.
- Every single boo (save King Boo) in Luigis Mansion has a name-based pun.
- There is a truly horrific/hilarious sex scene in Tsukihime that's completely made up of seafood (in the original Japanese) or Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Flavors (in the English translation) metaphors.
- Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime contains many, many Incredibly Lame Puns.
- Super Mario 64, and likely Sunshine and Galaxy star/shine mission names. A-maze-ing Emergency Exit and ''Eye to Eye in the Secret Room' anyone?
- This is the heart of an inside joke among fans of the BEMANI franchise of Rhythm Games. Someone will use one or more song names in a sentence, and then the other person responds with "GET IT!?"
- Every single death in Sierra's King's Quest series. For all seven games.
- The amount of hand-related puns in Runescape is just out of hand.
- Konami's American manuals during the NES and SNES days were pretty notorious for this, especially with the names of the enemy characters. For example: the Dancing Spectres in Super Castlevania IV are named "Paula Abghoul" and "Fred Askare", while the bad guy of Snake's Revenge is identified as "Higharolla Kockamamie".
- Speaking of Castlevania, the ending to the original game hits you with doubtless the worst hurricane of puns in the history of the WORLD: Boris Karloffice, Christopher Bee, Trans Fisher, etc.
- Many teams in the original Backyard Soccer have names that are puns.
- Many of the parts in Spore have pun names such as Pb Zeppelin
Web Original
- One scene in the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes has Rob, the Pungeon Master, trying to out-pun an ice Creturian. The pun war escalates until Tami finally shouts, "All right, already! Stop!"
- In the KateModern episodes "Drive Goo" and "Arma-goo-den", Charlie, Lee and Julia are given a Creme Egg car and the job of advertising Cadbury Creme Eggs. For some reason, this is the cue for a series of goo-related puns.
- Comments on Failblog almost always fall into one of these at some point.
- This Gaming in the Clinton Years review of Final Doom has so many Doom puns.
- A lot of Fark.com threads degrade into this.
- In particular, there is a user by the name of StopArrestingMe who fills his brilliant troll posts with puns on a particular theme, such as this post. The theme of the first part is bands with female frontmen (frontpersons?), the theme of the second part is seventies TV shows.
- The Bionic Commando episode of Unskippable was pretty much just this. They came in armed to the teeth with arm puns... and they were not afraid to lampshade this.
- This thread. For extra fun, see how long you can read it with a straight face.
- WTF Blanket 3: Awful Pun Overload.
Web Comics
- Irregular Webcomic is arguably the worst (or best) offender. If David Morgan-Marr stops managing to do amazing things with horrible puns, it will be a sign of the apocalypse.
- What about the running gag of the Hobbit puns? They show up roughly every 100 strips, just so you don't get overloaded on them.
- Irregular Webcomic Drinking Game: take a sip every time there's a pun. Give up as soon as you're no longer able to read the strips. This will happen within about thirty strips.
- The entire Deegan family in Dominic Deegan, Oracle For Hire specializes in this (though every character has used puns at some point or another) - even the "black sheep" Jacob can't resist pulling one out every once in a while. Most famous example, however, probably comes from the otherwise Straight Man, Sir Siegfried's, use of his 'Knight Vision' to locate two thieves hiding in the dark - by the sound of them GROANING at the pun.
- There's even an instance where two characters are having a very terse, serious argument, and suddenly their lines start containing electricity references, with neither realizing it. This prompts a nearby lighting mage (called the Maestro because he's "a great conductor") to hit them with a small lightning bolt.
- Sluggy Freelance occasionally indulges in this trope.
- In The Order Of The Stick, this is what allows Elan's prestige class to work. Whenever he's involved in combat, he becomes more powerful if he makes a pun or quick quip before landing a blow. Of course, this can get pretty bad when he fights multiple foes over the course of a single comic, and he's not allowed to reuse the puns. It also seems not to work when his enemies are too dumb to get the puns, as he found when fighting trolls. (The big ugly regenerating kind, not the other kind.)
- Erfworld runs on puns (HA!). From the titular city of Gobwin Knob, to Prince Ansom, to barbarian heroine Jillian Zamussels, to the Knights In Stanley's Service. If a name or dialogue bit isn't a pun, it's probably a pop culture Shout Out.
- 8-Bit Theater had a villain being killed by Black Mage's heart-attack-inducingly horrible pun.
- In Phil Foglio's What's New with Phil & Dixie, an explanation of the 'Jester' prestige-class includes a demonstration on how to turn a Hurricane Of Puns into an effective - if somewhat indiscriminate - weapon.
- One One Se7en. That is all.
- Doc Rat. Almost as bad as Irregular Webcomic at times, except the puns are mostly medical-themed. This is a particularly egregious example.
- General Protection Fault has occasionally been hit by one - most noteably a three-comic series of fruit-puns starting here.
- About half of all Cyanide And Happiness comic strips are on puns.[1]◊
- Precocious: Occurs whenever Kaitlyn Hu (or anyone in her family) appears in the comic. Typically, Chrispy channels Abbott and Costello for these jokes.
Western Animation
- Captain Hero of Drawn Together, when fighting his giant, mentally retarded son at a petting zoo, uses a sexual entendre for every animal that the giant throws at him, which includes beavers, a donkey, kittens, and a rooster. He specifically makes it obvious with the rooster, proudly exclaiming, "I'll wrap my hands around this cock and squeeze it until it explodes way too early and rolls over and falls asleep...leaving me unsatisfied and alone." Also an example of Metaphorgotten.
- Don't forget the episode where Xander, Clara and Foxy Love manage to stop Strawberry Shortcake parody, Strawberry Sweetcake, from her genocidal rampage leading to this lame pun filled moment: Xander (to Strawberry Shortcake): "Your gonna be spending a CHOCO-LOTTA time locked up behind candy bars!" Clara (whispering bitterly): "God dammit, I hate you."
- Beetlejuice: the Animated Series built entire sequences around puns that became somewhat surreal. The lead character successfully performed a short series of tasks, proclaim that he was 'on a roll'... and his feet flew out from under him as a huge buttered roll appeared.
- Kim Possible used a bucket load of math puns for the math-based villain the Mathter in "Mathter and Fervent." Examples include: Hego yelling "Four!" right before the Mathter throws the number four at Kim, the Mathter's minions being called Coefficients, and this:
Mathter: Oh why don't you just relax and have some Pi! [throws Pi weapon at Kim]
Ron: Kim!
Mathter: Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Now it's your turn to feel the full wrath of my math.
Ron: Okay, um, sure could use, I don't know, a hero right about now.
Mathter: Now prepare to be subtracted entirely because-
Ron: Because what? My number's up?
Mathter: Oh. Yes.
- There is an entire episode of The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack concerned with the "Stormalong Harbor Pun-off."
- The puntastic Numbuh Two gets one of his own in "Operation Butt".
- Wallace And Gromit often uses puns: many characters have Punny Names. One exchange from The Curse of the Were-rabbit pretty much sums it up.
Victor: (trying to get back his wig from Wallace's rabbit machine) I want... toupee, please.
Wallace: Oh, grand. We take cash or check.
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 animal.
- There's puns scattered across the entire series, though they seem to be more noticeable in Curse of the Were-Rabbit and A Matter of Loaf and Death (in the latter the BBC announcers warned of puns and even did a few themselves).
- Characters in Batman: The Animated Series had a habit of using a few either on purpose or unintentionally (probably the producers not realising). Joker uses several in The Laughing Fish, Penguin uses one or two in Almsot Got 'Im and Riddler's episodes are littered with them, to avoid an accidental pun, to the point even characters get annoyed with them. Notably after the pun "Losers ahead", (Loses a head), Batman mutters he's unsure what's worse, the traps or the puns.
- The kings of puns by the truckload in Western animation are most likely the Jay Ward-produced cartoons Rocky And Bullwinkle and George Of The Jungle.
- In the Fairly Odd Parents movie Abra Catastrophe, Timmy accidentally finds himself in a world where apes are the dominant species. Everything ends up an ape pun, like "Chimpsdale" as opposed to Dimmsdale. AJ lampshades it:
Crocker: And that, class, is how the founding alpha males signed the Declar-ape-tion of Independence forming the United Apes of America.
AJ: You know, if it weren’t for the fact that what he’s saying is historically accurate, I would say that’s a horrible pun.
- One of these actually saves what could have been another weak jab in a recent Treehouse of Horror episode parodying the "Great Pumpkin" Peanuts special. While making the original religious subtext much more explicit in his defense of his belief in the Great Pumpkin, Milhouse suddenly recites a doctored Apostle's Creed that turns into a nonstop (and hilarious) torrent of vegetable puns.
- The Warner siblings often rely on this, especially when dealing with Dr. Scratchnsniff.
- The Scooby Doo made-for-TV movies were loaded with monster-related puns. It will drive an adult to insanity.
- Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School was absolutely awful in this regard. It drove me nuts when I was a kid. It was unusual not to hear a pun less than once every 5-10 seconds in almost any given scene. Oh, and the move also had Scrappy Doo in it.
- Sheep In The Big City - The. Whole. Damn. Thing.
- Infamously in Disney's Aladdin, Jafar randomly starts shrieking out puns during his final battle with the title protagonist.
Jafar: Ha ha, princess, your TIME IS UP! (traps Jasmine in an hourglass)
Jafar: Don't TOY WITH ME! (turns Abu into a toy)
Jafar: Things are UNRAVELING fast now, boy! (unravels the magic carpet)
Jafar: Get the POINT?! (swords fall down around Aladdin)
Jafar: I'm just getting WARMED UP! (breathes fire)
- In the "Bartman Begins" story from the The Simpsons episode "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times" (2007), The Serpent (Snake Jailbird) makes a string of four snake-related puns while stealing some jewels. Krusty lampshades this ("Puns are lazy writing!") and is shot for his efforts.
- SpongeBob and Patrick get into a fight with some invisibility paint, and fire back-and-forth puns relating to their vanishing body parts. The narrator lampshades this with a title card saying, "Several bad puns later".
- This parody commercial of the third series of wtf blankets: "Your dog will beg for these...bitchin...blankets!" "Bitch as in..the female dog..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlhDAN8Dwnw&feature=channel
Real Life
- The U.S. legal system provides some unusual examples. When judges get snarky, they often get punny:
- Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association v. Clark, 482 F.2d 325 (5th Cir. 1973) (Brown, C.J., concurring)
"As Proctor of this dispute...the decision represents a Gamble since we risk a Cascade of criticism."
- In the Matter of Charlotte K., 102 Misc.2d 848, 427 N.Y.S.2d 370 (NY Fam. Ct. 1980)
"Is a girdle a burglar's tool or is that stretching the plain meaning of section 140.35 of the Penal Law? This elastic issue...[risks] putting the squeeze on court resources already overextended in this era of trim governmental budgets."
- Post v. Annand, 798 F.Supp. 189 (S.D. New York 1992)
"In this dog eat dog world, anything is fair game for litigation in the federal courts. While it may not be news when a dog bites a man, it is notable when a dog bites a female minister. As compensation for her injuries, plaintiff seeks to take a bite out of the defendants' pocketbooks...[she] obviously has a bone to pick as her injuries required substantial medical care, and Rocky is clearly in the doghouse. In dogged pursuit of damages for her trauma..."
- PU Ndit Keith Olbermann's coverage of the so-called "teabagging" protests in the United States on April 15 (the day taxes are due) will either leave you in stitches, or itching for a shoe to throw. If you don't get it, look up "teabagging" on Urban Dictionary.
- Also Rachel Maddow and guest Ana Maria Cox in the two/three days leading up to the protests.
- They'll need a Dick Armey for that kind of protest.
- Still not as funny as the faux pas about the Obamas "fisting" in front of the White House.
- Theme park example: The Hurricane Of Puns is the basis for several classic jokes on the World Famous Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. The most famous is in reference to the headhunter near the end of the ride ("Trader Sam's the head salesman around these parts, but business has been shrinking lately, so to cut down on his overhead, he's offering a killer deal: two of his heads for just one of yours. Any way you slice it, you're sure to come out ahead."), but there are several more floating around, including the complete menu to the Cannibal Cafe (elbow macaroni, rump roast, ladyfingers, and so on), a joke which name-checks every single amusement park in Southern California and lasts for about two minutes, and a joke which name-checks dozens of clothing retailers and lasts for twice as long. That's four minutes of puns.
- Stand-up comedian Tim Vine is this trope. As are Stewart Francis and the above mentioned Milton Jones.
- Swami Beyondananda, in both stand-up and books, has a way with it as well: "If you’re a sucker for a seer, and what the seer sees sucks, you can redress your grievance in a seersucker suit."
- German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote like this in his later days.
- Several pick up lines, including this troper's bio teacher's favorite: "I'm like DNA helicase - I unzip your jeans (genes)."
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