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Chekov: I was making a little joke, sir.
Spock: Extremely little, ensign.
You could be a glob of mustard. An undigested bit a beef. Yes, there's more of the gravy than of grave of you!
A character (especially a Pungeon Master) makes a pun so lame, obvious or disgusting that it makes listening characters wince, groan or even feel compelled to inflict violence on the punster—or, at least, bring a lawsuit against him for pun-itive damages. Rimshots are completely optional.
Not to be confused with Stealth Pun, which refers to puns where the punchline is simply left to the readers or listeners as an exercise, and not to particularly groan-inducing and/or obvious ones.
The chief purpose of this trope seems to be to allow an author to deploy an awful groaner and still dodge the blame for it by pointing the karmic retribution at the character.
Note that this refers explicitly to when these puns are referred to as lame in-series. This can happen even if the pun in question is actually really, really funny. For other puns that may or may not be bad, see Hurricane Of Puns and A World Wide Punomenon. For a character that always makes these, see Pungeon Master. For an index of punny trope names, see Just For Pun.
This may also warrant a Collective Groan. See also Visual Pun.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comics
- In Squadron Supreme, toddler Hyperion is startled by his new pet dog and incinerates it with his heat vision. One of the two guards watching him over security camera remarks "I guess Spot was kind of the right name after all." His partner lays him out for that one, in a cross between this trope and Dude Not Funny.
- Batman's Robins have such a propensity to this, it's been suspected it's a tacit requirement to being Robin.
Batman: You still haven't gotten over the puns? Nightwing: Oh shush. You love it.
- In the Don Rosa story "Return to Plain Awful," Donald Duck and Scrooge Mc Duck visit the Lost World of Plain Awful, a Utopia where square things are prized, round things are illegal, and the people live "on good cheer" with no financial interests. Eventually, Scrooge does manage to interest the people in his money—but only aesthetically, and as a finishing touch, they chop their new stack of bills into two square halves. The story ends with Donald noting that now, Scrooge (who had constantly been boasting about having made his money that way) has something in common with the Awfultonians:
Commercials
Film
- Duck Soup: Chicolini's suggestion that Freedonia maintain a standing army, "because then we save money on chairs", provokes Firefly to give him the bum's rush from the room (and apparently worse, judging by the Offscreen Crash that follows).
Literature
- The New Discworld Companion tells the story of Monsieur Pune, creator of the Fool's Guild:
"Q. When is a door not a door? A. When it is ajar (a jar)" - one of his early puns for which he was tarred and feathered and left for dead.
- For all that Pratchett makes fun of it, he generally has at least one rather dreadful pun per book. The "gilt by association" one in Night Watch comes to mind.
- Dave Barry, as he states in the page quote, is not fond of puns, and rarely uses them without heavyweight Lampshade Hanging. Take, for example, this passage in Dave Barry Slept Here:
But now he could sit back and relax as the reaper roared through as many as ten acres per hour, reaping the living hell out of everything that stood in its path, occasionally spitting out bits of mule fur or farmhand clothing, which could easily be reassembled thanks to the sewing machine, invented by Elias Howe. "Don't ask me Howe it works!" he used to say, over and over, until finally somebody, we think his wife, shot him in the head with a revolver, invented by Samuel Colt.
- Or this passage in Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You Will Ever Need:
The history of Ireland dates back a long time to the original inhabitants, the Picts, who were a fun-loving tribe known for their wit. "You sure Pict a winner that time!" is the kind of thing they were always saying, until finally a neighboring tribe called the Celtics got sick and tired of it and came in and, in 432 B.C. on October 8, defeated the Picts in the Battle of Defeating the Picts when John Havlicek sank two free throws in overtime.
- In Piers Anthony's Xanth series, much of the wildlife and magic are literal puns, such as a mango being a human-shaped fruit that makes you urinate immediately upon eating it. Most of the characters dislike the puns, particularly a winged centaur whose name is a pun (Karia, who starts floating helplessly away whenever she hears her name.)
- The characters in Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series are prolific with these, to the point of competitions in which the worst / best pun of the evening gets his bar tab waived. They call it Punday Night. Normally, things are thrown at the offending punster, and fire extinguishers and seltzer bottles are also used for particularly awful puns.
As Callahan says, "I noticed that all my customers were drinking twice as much as usual, to blunt the pain. So I invented Punday."
- The Marvellous Land of Oz sees H.M. Wogglebug T.E. make joke about the Sawhorse, noting that if he rode him, it would be a "horse-and-buggie". Jack Pumpkinhead covers up his permanently-smiling mouth, and the Tin Woodsman threatens the Wogglebug with his axe.
- The quote from A Christmas Carol shows this trope is Older Than Cars.
Live Action TV
- Tom Servo of Mystery Science Theater 3000 absolutely loves to bust these out, usually attracting the ire of Crow and Joel/Mike.
- On Buffy, this exchange (among others):
Giles: I've never actually heard of anyone attacked by a lone baseball bat before.
Xander: Maybe it's a vampire bat.
Everyone: *stares*
- On M*A*S*H, B.J. was prone to these.
Hawkeye: In fact, you might say that all of us together made up Tuttle." Cut to eyeroll from Radar.
- Johnny Carson's "Carnac the Magnificent" on The Tonight Show typically served up plenty of puns and if the audience groaned or booed loudly enough, Carnac would place a funny curse on them in retaliation.
- Spaced: Mike is kicked out of the Rough Ramblers after a disastrous Eskimo roll. Tim says:
- Frasier. In Look Before You Leap, Frasier is attempting an opera song, requiring him to hit an impossibly high note, while Niles is horny due to refusing Maris' rare sexual invite despite their marriage counselor's advice.
Niles: You know, as much as I admire your willingness to take a leap, I did warn you that you were getting into a dangerous “aria.” (pained laugh) Oh God, I’m using humor to mask sexual frustration. It’s high school all over again.
- Robert Lee, the narrator for Mythbusters makes as many puns about the myth being tested as possible.
Music
- In "The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach", during the introduction to Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice, Peter Schickele mentions that this particular work (an opera "in one unnatural act") was rewritten for the Vienna Opera Company so that Mrs. Vienna and her son could play all of the parts, while Mr. Vienna played the piano in his best formal attire, the "Tails of Old Vienna" - whereupon the (live) audience erupts into groans and pained exclamations.
Newspaper Comics
Theater
- Gilbert And Sullivan, The Grand Duke:
Notary: When exigence of rhyme compels, Orthography forgoes her spells, And "ghost" is rhymed with "goest". All: With what an emphasis he dwells Upon "orthography" and "spells"! That kind of fun's the lowest.
Video Games
"This is a dairy goat. Insert a pun on "udderly" and "utterly", if you're the kind of guy who doesn't get punched in the face enough. "
Then later in the fight
"She swings her udder at you, but misses. She's an udder failure. Yeah, go ahead and punch me in the face."
Webcomics
Web Original
- Whateley Universe: Chaka's lame pun at the end of "Ayla and the Networks" gets her severely pummeled by pillows, beanbag chairs, etc.
- The web fiction serial Dimension Heroes is notorious for bad puns, which usually lead to whoever says them getting smacked.
- Dragonball Z Abridged Parody includes this little gem:
- In Spoony's Let's Play of Phantasmagoria 2, he made more than a few horrible puns and then smacks himself for doing so.
Western Animation
- In Batman Beyond "Dead Man's Hand," Bruce explains to Terry how the Royal Flush Gang are old-school gimmick villains, only committing robberies for items related to playing card suits (such as diamonds). Why their heist on a yacht for miscellaneous non-diamond jewelry, then? "It was in a yacht club." They're both disgusted by the pun.
- Carlos, on The Magic School Bus, frequently inflicts these on his classmates, resulting in a
Collective Groan of his name. First Name Ultimatum by everyone else present.
- Looney Tunes' Foghorn Leghorn often came up with these, prompting sighs and eyeball-rolling from Henry Hawk, Barnyard Dawg, or whoever else he was talking to. ("You gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye! Ball! Eyeball! I almost had a gag, son! Joke, that is!")
- There was a literal Card Carrying Villain on Jackie Chan Adventures, complete with puns like "We have the upper hand" and even his boss tells him to "quit with the card puns."
- In the first episode of South Park to air after 9/11, Towelie makes a cameo appearance. Discovering the kids don't want him around, he asks, "Am I to understand there's been a... Towelie ban?" Everyone else groans, once they figure it out.
- In Disney's Aladdin, during the final battle, Jafar makes a number of fairly horrible puns in quick succession (e.g. "Things are unraveling quickly" as he literally unravels the magic carpet). In the DVD Commentary, they comment on this, saying "he's trying to kill them with bad puns."
- He does it again in an episode of Hercules: The Animated Series when he teams up with Hades (who himself comments on it a lot).
- At least half of the things Numbuh Two says in Codename Kids Next Door. It really bothered Numbuh Five.
- Beast Boy from Teen Titans frequently makes jokes which his teammates hate. There are too many to list here, however most notable, I believe, is the one in which the throws the Brain into a freezing machine saying something like "Dudes check it out! BRAIN FREEZE". The entire hero cast (plus some extras) groans in dismay.
- Danny from Danny Phantom in the episode Shades of Gray, the ghost dog burst into the school and Danny responds with "Who let the dogs in?". Right afterwards, Danny had to explain the joke and decided to save some face to get the dog out. Sam responds with, "Bring better jokes!"
- In the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Pranks A Lot" where the above pic came from, Spongebob and Patrick get their hands on a can of invisibility spray.
Patrick (spray's Spongebob's hand with the spray): I gotta hand it to you, Spongebob, that is pretty funny!
Spongebob (snatches the can and sprays Patrick's stomach): Kinda gives ya an empty feeling, huh?
Patrick (snatches can back and sprays Spongebob's eye): Yeah, I see what you mean!
Spongebob (snatches the can and sprays Patrick's abdominal area): No guts, no glory!
- This is eventually interrupted by a title card reading "Several Bad Puns Later".
- Squidward tends to make lame jokes, sprinkling puns that only he laughs at. "Why didn't the kid go in the Pirate Movie? Because it's rated 'arrr'. You know, 'arrr' as in pirates?"
- He likes band humor, you know.
- Yellow Submarine is liberally sprinkled with puns, but one in particular, when the submarine's motor dies, falls into this category:
George: Maybe we should call a road service?
Paul: Can't, no road!
Ringo: And we're not sub... scribers.
John/Paul/George: [groan]
- The Simpsons Halloween Special — Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace has Willie/Freddie uttering a pun that's called horrible in the DVD Commentary.
Willie: [to a Latin-speaking Martin] You may have mastered a dead tongue, but can you handle a live one?! [proceeds to strangle Martin with his tongue, Freddie Kruger-style]
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