Parental Bonus - Television Tropes & Idioms

Billy: Are you a genie that grants wishes, while doing imitations only my dad gets?

— The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

A joke on a children's TV show that children of the appropriate age would never get, but which their parents would. Serves as a way to keep the adults awake and usually takes the form of an homage to a movie or TV show that children would not be familiar with. This is the master trope to other "subliminal" tropes like a Double Entendre, Does This Remind You Of Anything, No Celebrities Were Harmed or Getting Crap Past The Radar. See also Parent Service.

Popularized by Sesame Street, with characters like Sherlock Hemlock, Bert and Ernie and the Count, and thus most common on educational shows. Surprisingly, the barely intelligible Cookie Monster seems to get the most Parental Bonus lines, at least in recent history: "Me undergo sea-change," etc.

Of course, a badly done Parental Bonus will entertain neither the kids nor the adults, and may terrify the latter that the former actually will "get" it...

Golden Age animated shorts, especially those from Fleischer Studios and Warner Bros., often had material which would be considered Parental Bonus today (if people still got the references), as they were intended for all audiences (see Animation Age Ghetto). As a result, many cartoons had numerous double entendres and pseudo-cameos which were expected to go over the younger viewers' heads.

These jokes also give the shows rerun value years later when the original viewers are old enough to get the jokes that once went over their heads.

Contrary to the title, children of a certain age can get Parental Bonuses, most of them just don't watch shows that use them. (With the exception of Spongebob.)